The Copenhagen Interpretation Of Quantum Theory Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [2]

Gribbin (1990: 161):

Secondly, all we know about are the results of experiments. … What we can learn from experiments, or from the equations of quantum theory, is the probability that if we look at a system once and get answer A then the next time we look we will get answer B.  We can say nothing at all about what happens when we are not looking, and how the system gets from A to B, if indeed it does.  The "damned quantum jumping" that so disturbed Schrödinger is purely our interpretation of why we get two different answers to the same experiment, and it is a false interpretation.  Sometimes things are found to be in state A, sometimes in state B, and the question of what lies between, or how they get from one state to another, is completely meaningless.

This is the really fundamental feature of the quantum world.  It is interesting that there are limits to our knowledge of what an electron is doing when we are looking at it, but it is absolutely mind-blowing to discover that that we have no idea at all what it is doing when we are not looking at it.

Blogger Comment:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, this is not 'mind-blowing' at all.  If there is no observation, then there is no construal of experience as meaning — e.g. as particles and their states.  The construing of experience as a probabilistic system is the construing of experience as potential rather than instance.  The construing of experience as particles in state A, B etc. is the construing of experience as instances, with instance frequencies in line with (and predicted by) the system probabilities.

The Copenhagen Interpretation Of Quantum Theory Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [1]

Gribbin (1990: 160-1):

Today the key features of the Copenhagen interpretation can be more easily explained, and understood, in terms of what happens when a scientist makes an experimental observation.  First, we have to accept that the very act of observing a thing changes it, and that we, the observers, are in a very real sense part of the experiment — there is no clockwork that ticks away regardless of whether we look at it or not.

Blogger Comment:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the observer is part of the experiment in the sense that it is the observer that construes the experience as meaning.  No observer, no construal of experience — as particles, as time etc.  The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics is consistent with the SFL distinction between experience and meaning, and the view that meaning is immanent within semiotic systems rather than transcendent of them.

Quantum Theory Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [2]

Gribbin (1990: 160):

By choosing to measure position precisely, we force a particle to develop more uncertainty in its momentum, and vice versa; by choosing an experiment to measure wave properties, we eliminate particle features, and no experiment reveals both particle and wave aspects at the same time; and so on.

Blogger Comment:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, measuring the position or momentum of a particle is a construal of experience as meaning.  Any uncertainty lies in such construals as propositions, as enactments of interpersonal meaning by an observer.

Measuring wave properties does not eliminate particle features. Measuring wave properties is construing wave properties; and simultaneously not measuring particle features is simultaneously not construing particle features.

The Thoughts Of Bohr Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [3]

Gribbin (1990: 160):

[Bohr] pointed out that that whereas in classical physics we imagine a system of interacting particles to function, like clockwork, regardless of whether or not they are observed, in quantum physics the observer interacts with the system to such an extent that that the system cannot be thought of as having independent existence.

Blogger Comment:

The perspective of classical physics derives from Galileo's notion of primary (vs secondary) qualities and Descartes notion of res extensa (vs res cogitans), as previously discussed here and here.

Bohr's perspective on quantum physics is consistent with Systemic Functional Linguistic theory in as much as 'the interaction of the observer with the system' means that, without the observer, there is no construal of experience as meaning.  It is the semiotic construal of experience that has no independent existence from the observer.