Quantum Physics and Human Language
arXiv:quant-ph/0610131 · doi:10.1088/1751-8113/40/12/S13
Abstract
Human languages employ constructions that tacitly assume specific properties of the limited range of phenomena they evolved to describe. These assumed properties are true features of that limited context, but may not be general or precise properties of all the physical situations allowed by fundamental physics. In brief, human languages contain `excess baggage' that must be qualified, discarded, or otherwise reformed to give a clear account in the context of fundamental physics of even the everyday phenomena that the languages evolved to describe. The surest route to clarity is to express the constructions of human languages in the language of fundamental physical theory, not the other way around. These ideas are illustrated by an analysis of the verb `to happen' and the word `reality' in special relativity and the modern quantum mechanics of closed systems.
Contribution to the festschrift for G.C. Ghirardi on his 70th Birthday, minor corrections
References in corpus (9)
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- Dynamical Reduction Models
- On the Consistent Histories Approach to Quantum Mechanics
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Cited by in corpus (11)
- Shortcomings in the Understanding of Why Cosmological Perturbations Look Classical
- An Introduction to Consistent Quantum Theory
- Decoherent Histories Quantum Mechanics with One 'Real' Fine-Grained History
- Properties and Applications of the Kirkwood-Dirac Distribution
- Quantum origin of the primordial fluctuation spectrum and its statistics
- Quantum Mechanics with Extended Probabilities
- Understanding quantum mechanics: a review and synthesis in precise language
- On the Consistency of the Consistent Histories Approach to Quantum Mechanics
- Einselection, Equilibrium and Cosmology
- Quantum histories without contrary inferences
- Linear superposition as a core theorem of quantum empiricism