Apr 29, 2025 03:33 PM
https://aeon.co/essays/no-schrodingers-c...-same-time
EXCERPTS: What happened next is rather fascinating. While researching Einstein’s special theory of relativity for a book she was writing sometime in 1972, the American science fiction author Ursula Le Guin came across a reference to Schrödinger’s cat. As the philosopher Robert Crease put it in a 2024 article, she was instantly ‘entranced by the implied uncertainties and appreciated the fantastic nature of Schrödinger’s image...’
[...] In her short story ‘Schrödinger’s Cat’ (1974), Le Guin presents Bohm’s version of the paradox involving the photon, half-silvered mirror and gun. In a dialogue between the nameless narrator and a dog called Rover, Le Guin wrote:
The cat’s cultural appeal lies in the ‘what if’ questions it provokes. It encourages us to ponder the consequences of our very human choices...
[...] So, when we talk about the cat being in a superposition of life and death, this doesn’t mean that the cat is literally alive and dead at the same time. In truth, we don’t know what the state of the cat really is, nor how to describe its real physical situation, because we can’t say for certain when the radioactive atom will decay, or whether the photon will be transmitted or reflected. But if we represent this system as a superposition, we know we will make predictions that will prove to be consistent with experiment. Most physicists, at least those who can be bothered to think about these things, adopt this view. This might be why they’re not often invited to parties.
It follows from this that it doesn’t matter precisely where in the chain of events we declare that the weirdness stops. It doesn’t matter where we place a ‘Heisenberg cut’, named for the German physicist Werner Heisenberg (of uncertainty principle fame), the point at which we stop using quantum mechanics and switch to more familiar theories of physics published more than 300 years ago by Isaac Newton. This is the point at which we assume the wavefunction collapses, and we replace the and of the quantum superposition with the or of actual outcomes.
[...] We are faced with a choice. We can recognise that quantum mechanics – with all its weirdness – is a purely symbolic framework for predicting the probabilistic outcomes of our experiments. It is indeed a calculational trick, not to be taken literally, which allows us some ability to get a handle on an otherwise unfathomable atomic and subatomic world.
Or we can recognise (with Einstein and Schrödinger) that quantum theory is at the very least incomplete, and deeply unsatisfactory. A theory capable of fathoming the atomic and subatomic world ought to be possible, if only we have the will to look for it, and the wit to find it... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: What happened next is rather fascinating. While researching Einstein’s special theory of relativity for a book she was writing sometime in 1972, the American science fiction author Ursula Le Guin came across a reference to Schrödinger’s cat. As the philosopher Robert Crease put it in a 2024 article, she was instantly ‘entranced by the implied uncertainties and appreciated the fantastic nature of Schrödinger’s image...’
[...] In her short story ‘Schrödinger’s Cat’ (1974), Le Guin presents Bohm’s version of the paradox involving the photon, half-silvered mirror and gun. In a dialogue between the nameless narrator and a dog called Rover, Le Guin wrote:
‘… We cannot predict the behaviour of the photon, and thus, once it has behaved, we cannot predict the state of the system it has determined. We cannot predict it! God plays dice with the world! So it is beautifully demonstrated that if you desire certainty, any certainty, you must create it yourself!’
‘How?’
‘By lifting the lid of the box, of course,’ Rover said …
The cat’s cultural appeal lies in the ‘what if’ questions it provokes. It encourages us to ponder the consequences of our very human choices...
[...] So, when we talk about the cat being in a superposition of life and death, this doesn’t mean that the cat is literally alive and dead at the same time. In truth, we don’t know what the state of the cat really is, nor how to describe its real physical situation, because we can’t say for certain when the radioactive atom will decay, or whether the photon will be transmitted or reflected. But if we represent this system as a superposition, we know we will make predictions that will prove to be consistent with experiment. Most physicists, at least those who can be bothered to think about these things, adopt this view. This might be why they’re not often invited to parties.
It follows from this that it doesn’t matter precisely where in the chain of events we declare that the weirdness stops. It doesn’t matter where we place a ‘Heisenberg cut’, named for the German physicist Werner Heisenberg (of uncertainty principle fame), the point at which we stop using quantum mechanics and switch to more familiar theories of physics published more than 300 years ago by Isaac Newton. This is the point at which we assume the wavefunction collapses, and we replace the and of the quantum superposition with the or of actual outcomes.
[...] We are faced with a choice. We can recognise that quantum mechanics – with all its weirdness – is a purely symbolic framework for predicting the probabilistic outcomes of our experiments. It is indeed a calculational trick, not to be taken literally, which allows us some ability to get a handle on an otherwise unfathomable atomic and subatomic world.
Or we can recognise (with Einstein and Schrödinger) that quantum theory is at the very least incomplete, and deeply unsatisfactory. A theory capable of fathoming the atomic and subatomic world ought to be possible, if only we have the will to look for it, and the wit to find it... (MORE - missing details)
