Monday, April 14, 2003

A Bit On Schrodinger's Cat...and Ceramics? Because I can't resist...forgive me if you've heard it already, or understand physics and really know what this is all about... Schrodinger came up with an illustration concerning an oddity in quantum mechanics. Say you have a cat in a box, with a small bit of radio active stuff. When the radio active stuff does it's thing, gas is released that kills the cat. After an hour the radioactive stuff may, or may not, do its thing. During this time, one can say that the cat could be understood to be both dead and alive, in what quantum law calls a superposition of states. Once one looked into the box, the observation would (in a quantum mechanically way) cause the cat to be in a dead or an alive state. Thanks, whatis.com, Popular Mechanics and The Interactive Schrodinger's Cat So, say you have one of those ceramic pieces with a hidden compartment that we looked at yesterday. ..or maybe a ring box that is closed...or any kind of special container that we've been talking about for the last couple of months.... If the special meaning that the piece has comes from its contents, and you know that there is a possibility that the content is not there (or is different than what one supposes,) can you understand that the piece both has and does not have that special meaning? Put it another way. Let's say you permanently seal your container knowing that the content will rot *sometime* and when it does, it loses that which makes it special. Would the container then lose its special meaning, and if so when? How do you understand that container? I may be way off base on this one, but I think there is something here to think about. Our understanding of meaning of a piece, one in which meta-information plays a big part, may be a bit more complex than meets the eye. 9:46:57 PM