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Systems Research

Shadows of language in physics and cybernetics

Lars Löfgren

Published Sep 1, 1996• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In a large variety of disciplines, fundamental studies often straddle in self-referential situations, in need of relativization to language and complementaristic resolution. In such attempts, the languages at play are hardly visible themselves. Only shadows of language, somewhat characteristic of the various disciplines, become visible and tractable. We select two domains, quantum mechanics and cybernetics, for a comparative study of their complementarity concepts with consequence for understandings of observability, describability, and objectivity. In particular, we compare Bohr–Pauli's ‘non-detachability of the observer’ and von Foerster's aphorisms for objectivity. In quantum mechanics, with its emphasis on experimentability and measurability, Bohr's primary view of complementarity takes the form of a tension between definability and measurability. In cybernetics, we have a central interest in inferribility above the more constructive measurability, and the linguistic complementarity takes the form of a tension between describability and interpretability. In quests for a complete quantum mechanical measurement language, we face an interesting situation, that of simulating semantic measurability by syntactic inferribility. It calls for a cybernetic tie, whereby the two processes of assertibility, by measurability and by provability, become united under complementarity. Although semantic and syntactic processes are complementary within the measurement language, they may be unfolded in levels of constructivity, allowing identification of the lowest levels. Namely, identification of the constructivity level of a basic measurement sentence, i.e., a sentence which can be affirmed by a direct measurement (without involving further inferences), with the lowest constructivity level of syntactic provability. We exemplify with an explanation of a recent challenge against Bohr's wave–particle compementarity. Namely, by the so called double-prism experiment of Ghose, Home, and Agarwal. We find the experiment quite interesting, not because of the alleged challenge, but by realizing that its interpretation requires a levelled approach to quantum theory.

DOI
10.1002/(sici)1099-1735(199609)13:3<329::aid-sres98>3.0.co;2-2

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In a large variety of disciplines, fundamental studies often straddle in self-referential situations, in need of relativization to language and complementaristic resolution. In such attempts, the languages at play are hardly visible themselves. Only shadows of language, somewhat characteristic of the various disciplines, become visible and tractable. We select two domains, quantum mechanics and cybernetics, for a comparative study of their complementarity concepts with consequence for understandings of observability, describability, and objectivity. In particular, we compare Bohr–Pauli's ‘non-detachability of the observer’ and von Foerster's aphorisms for objectivity. In quantum mechanics, with its emphasis on experimentability and measurability, Bohr's primary view of complementarity takes the form of a tension between definability and measurability. In cybernetics, we have a central interest in inferribility above the more constructive measurability, and the linguistic complementarity takes the form of a tension between describability and interpretability. In quests for a complete quantum mechanical measurement language, we face an interesting situation, that of simulating semantic measurability by syntactic inferribility. It calls for a cybernetic tie, whereby the two processes of assertibility, by measurability and by provability, become united under complementarity. Although semantic and syntactic processes are complementary within the measurement language, they may be unfolded in levels of constructivity, allowing identification of the lowest levels. Namely, identification of the constructivity level of a basic measurement sentence, i.e., a sentence which can be affirmed by a direct measurement (without involving further inferences), with the lowest constructivity level of syntactic provability. We exemplify with an explanation of a recent challenge against Bohr's wave–particle compementarity. Namely, by the so called double-prism experiment of Ghose, Home, and Agarwal. We find the experiment quite interesting, not because of the alleged challenge, but by realizing that its interpretation requires a levelled approach to quantum theory.
The interesting double-prism experiment of Ghose, Home, and Agarwal 5) has been suggested 5, 8, 16, 7, 6) as a challenge to Bohr´s views of complementarity. With the linguistic complementarity 14) as a general notion of complementarity, we analyze Bohr´s views of complementarity. We find that a careful formulation of Bohr´s wave-particle complementarity, with an explicit characterization of measurability as a particular low-level kind of quantum theoretical inferribility, is in fact not confronted by the double-prism experiment. Much less is the outcome a challenge to Bohr´s primary view of complementarity, namely as a tension between definability and observability in a quantum mechanical observation language. This primary view of Bohr, which is visible already in his Como paper 1), is a general formulation of quantum mechanical complementarity. Although it connects well to the subsequent metamathematical development of the wider linguistic complementarity, as a tension between describability and interpretability in a language, it is today surprisingly seldom referred to in quantum mechanical texts. Rather, discussions of the role of complementarity for the interpretability problem for quantum theory tend to focus on Bohr´s view of complementarity in terms of phenomena, which he conceived in his later discussions with Einstein (and which appears less clear than Bohr´s primary view of complementarity). The hierarchical structuring of quantum theory which is suggested in our analysis of the double-prism experiment, and in the analysis of complementarity in terms of phenomena, is of interest also for the general interpretability problem for quantum theory, and for questions about a quantum mechanical reality.
Language has to be conceived wholistically. Fragmented views, provoked by attempts at describing language, turn out essentially distortive on the general phenomenon which language is, with species like genetic language, programming language, formal language, observation language, inner cerebral language, external communication language. At the center of this wholism is a linguistic complementarity which obtains for every language. It reflects a linguistic realism where communicability plays a role which may be compared with that of experimentability for aphysical realism. Complementarity concepts of Bergson, Bohr, and Pauli all turn out reducible to the linguistic complementarity. Certain issues within the philosophy of quantum mechanics are viewed from the position of linguistic realism. A linguistic embedding of quantum mechanics is suggested. The Pauli-Bohr dialogue on the nondetachability of the observer is compared with the nondetachability of language, one of fourexposed views of the linguistic complementarity. Another implies nondescribability, but conceivability, of realities. It is further developed in terms of a linguistic model for existential perceptions. It compares well with reality conceptions of Bergson, Pauli, and Laurikainen.
What is a physical object according to the theory of quantum mechanics? The first answer to be considered is that given by Bohr in terms of the concept of complementarity. This interpretation is illustrated by way of an example, the two slit experiment, which highlights some of the associated problems of ontology. One such problem is the so-called problem of measurement or observation. Various interpretations of measurement in Quantum Theory, including those of Heisenberg, von Neumann, Everett and Bohr, are compared and contrasted. A second problem concerns whether or not QT can be considered complete and therefore satisfactory as a basis for physics. Various attempts to complete QT by means of the addition of ‘hidden variables’ to the quantum mechanical state function are considered and their aims and achievements assessed. Finally, we investigate some of the characteristic ontological problems for the orthodox interpretation of Relativistic Quantum Theory.
When a physical theory is in its early stages of development, it presents many concepts and constructs that may not be necessary for its interpretation, or may simply be equivocal. As the theory is developed by the physics community, it hopefully passes through a depuration process that washes away many of these constructs and introduces others not initially devised. This process can be viewed, and modeled, as a semiotic process by which the suggested interpretations of the theory, initially dispersed in the space of concepts, taper off in a way that leaves only a small number of possibilities, ideally only one. However, to qualify this process and impose semiotic and epistemological constraints on the depuration process, it seems natural to consider a physical theory as an excerpt of a language and its suggested interpretations as texts, endowed with syntactics and semantics. In this paper we present this framing of general physical theories and apply the resulting semiotic and epistemological constraints we uphold to the special case of quantum mechanics, which shows particular resistance to interpretation tapering. We then show that the findings of this paper are especially important for allowing one to form a hierarchy of interpretations of the same formal structure of a physical theory, even in the case of an experimental underdetermination of these interpretations, which is precisely the case for quantum mechanics. This result is particularly important for more modern physical theories, which are becoming increasingly more abstract and difficult to interpret.
Having discussed the meaning of complementarity in general and wave particle complementarity in particular, I wish now to explicate Bohr's subtle argument for the thesis that certain pairs of classical concepts which are mutually compatible in classical physics are mutually exclusive in quantum physics, i.e. the thesis of kinematic–dynamic complementarity. It is generally held that Bohr regarded the mutual exclusiveness in question as being not only epistemic but also ontic or semantic, in the sense that the uncertainty principle expresses a restriction not only on the joint measurability of canonically conjugate observables but also on the joint instantiation of the properties corresponding to these observables. I shall consider the question of the ontic or semantic construal of kinematic–dynamic complementarity in Chapter 7. Bohr's argument for complementarity in the epistemic sense is, however, more fundamental: it goes to the heart of his theory of observation and measurement in quantum physics. What, then, is Bohr's argument? The mutual exclusiveness of kinematic and dynamic properties Kinematic and dynamic attributes in quantum mechanics are mutually exclusive in the sense that they cannot be simultaneously measured; they are, in this sense, epistemically incompatible. Why did Bohr think this? His reasons may seem intricate, but they are basically quite simple. Two main factors, he maintains, account for the epistemic incompatibility: ( a ) measurements of these two different sorts of properties require mutually exclusive experimental arrangements, incompatible measurement procedures; ( b ) the indeterminability of the interaction between the object and the instrument of measurement precludes extrapolation of the different measurement results to one and the same time.
From the preceding exposition it follows that not only physics but natural science as a whole is basically dependent on ordinary language. The complementarity of quantum physics displays the fundamental interdependence of observation and description of natural phenomena, and the very objectivity of natural science relies directly on the differentiation of experiences into external and private phenomena afforded by ordinary language. Because of the extreme smallness of the quantum of action the complementarity of physical phenomena is not experienced either in daily life or in classical physics. But the interdependence of observation and description of phenomena prevails as much in classical science as in quantum physics. The very aim of experimental investigation is to perform observations in those particular ways which make possible the communication of information sufficient for the reproduction of the observed phenomena. Concordantly the elementary physical variables, which are indispensable to any systematic analysis in natural science, are defined through reference to measuring arrangements constructed so as to be unambiguously describable in ordinary language. Thus no scientific formula, law, or result of measurement can be given objective significance independent of ordinary language. Through every hierarchy of descriptions in natural science ordinary language penetrates as the unambiguity of propositions.