In the experiments about atomic events we have to do with things and facts, with phenomena that are just as real as any phenomena in daily life. But atoms and the elementary particles themselves are not as real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts ... The probability wave ... mean[s] tendency for something. It's a quantitative version of the old concept of potentia from Aristotle's philosophy. It introduces something standing in the middle between the idea of an event and the actual event, a strange kind of physical reality just in the middle between possibility and reality.
Blogger Comments:
From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, atoms and elementary particles are just as real as any phenomena in daily life, in the sense that all such phenomena are construals of experience as meaning. The probability wave, 'a world of potentialities or possibilities', identifies the range of potential construals of experience as reality.
This perspective is not quite Aristotle's concept of potentia, because, unlike Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, Aristotle's philosophy did not relate potential to actual by the vector of instantiation.
From this perspective, the probability wave does not introduce 'a strange kind of physical reality just in the middle between possibility and reality'. Instead it identifies the possibility of reality: the range of potential construals of experience as meaning, graded in terms of probability.
