The 'Schrödinger's Cat' Paradox Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [1]

Gribbin (1990: 2-3):

For what quantum mechanics says is that nothing is real and that we cannot say anything about what things are doing when we are not looking at them.  Schrödinger's mythical cat was invoked to make the differences between the quantum world and the everyday world clear.

In the world of quantum mechanics, the laws of physics that are familiar from the everyday world no longer work.  Instead, events are governed by probabilities.  A radioactive atom, for example, might decay, emitting an electron, say; or it might not.  It is possible to set up an experiment in such a way that there is a precise fifty-fifty chance that one of the atoms in a lump of radioactive material will decay in a certain time and that a detector will register the decay if it does happen.  Schrödinger, as upset as Einstein about the implications of quantum theory, tried to show the absurdity of those implications by imagining such an experiment set up in a closed room, or box, which also contains a live cat and a phial of poison, so arranged that if the radioactive decay does occur then the poison container is broken and the cat dies.  In the everyday world, there is a fifty-fifty chance that that the cat will be killed, and without looking inside the box we can say, quite happily, that the cat inside is either dead or alive.  But now we encounter the strangeness of the quantum world.  According to the theory, neither of the two possibilities open to the radioactive material, and therefore to the cat, has any reality unless it is observed.  The atomic decay has neither happened nor not happened, the cat has neither been killed nor not been killed, until we look inside the box to see what happened.  Theorists who accept the pure version of quantum mechanics say that the cat exists in some indeterminate state, neither dead nor alive, until an observer looks into the box to see how things are getting on.  Nothing is real unless it is observed.

Blogger Comment:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the finding from quantum mechanics that 'we cannot say anything about what things are doing when we are not looking at them' is not at all strange, but entirely consistent with the view that 'what things are doing' is meaning construed of experience.  Without the observation, there is no construal of experience as meaning. The meaning 'Schrödinger's cat is alive/dead' cannot be construed of experience until the observation is made.

The confounding notion of 'real' here derives from the Galilean and Cartesian distinction of 'primary' qualities, such as locomotion and position, being 'out there' in the world of matter versus 'secondary' qualities being 'in here' in the world of the mind.