Quantum Entanglement Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Penrose (2004: 583-4):

So what is quantum entanglement? What are EPR effects? … The simplest EPR situation is that considered by David Bohm (1951). In this, we envisage a pair of spin ½ particles, let us say, particle PL and particle PR, which start together in a combined spin 0 state, and then travel away from each other to the left and right to respective detectors L and R at a great distance apart (see Fig. 23.2).

Let us suppose that each of the detectors is capable of measuring the spin of the approaching particle in some direction that is only decided upon when the two particles are well separated from each other. The problem is to see whether it is possible to reproduce the expectations of quantum mechanics using some model in which the particles are regarded as unconnected independent classical-like entities, each one being unable to communicate with the other after they have separated. 

It turns out, because of a remarkable theorem due to the Northern Irish physicist John S. Bell, that it is not possible to reproduce the predictions of quantum theory in this way. Bell derived inequalities relating the joint probabilities of the results of two physically separated measurements that are violated by the expectations of quantum mechanics, yet which are necessarily satisfied by any model in which the two particles behave as independent entities after they have become physically separated. Thus, Bell-inequality violation demonstrates the presence of essentially quantum-theoretic effects — these being effects of quantum entanglements between physically separated particles — which cannot be explained by any model according to which the particles are treated as unconnected and independent actual things.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, particles are actual, but they are instances of potential. Each observation of the spin of a particle is the instantiation of quantum potential, where the probability of each instance of spin depends on the probability of the other. In this view, there is no signalling or interaction between the instances (particles), since the relation here is between potential (wavefunction) and instances of that potential (particles).