Quantum Physics and Human Language

Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond

James B Hartle

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.

Hartle, J B

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.

José I. Abreu, Juan Pablo Consuegra‐Ayala, Isabel Espinosa-Zaragoza +12 more

T. Bergstein

This book deals with the interdependence of the phenomenological and conceptual levels of experience.This interdependence is most objectively demonstrated by the complementarity of quantum physics.When examining the basic function of ordinary language within quantum physics it is seen that complementarity is fundamental to human comprehension itself, particularly to the interaction of language and mind.