In an early December blog I introduced the concept of the human mind being in several states at the same time. Often we implicitly assume that our mind should be in one state only, for instance either positive or negative about something. In reality it is quite clear that human mind is capable of containing many different and even opposing views at the same time. However our conscious mind really likes to pick out one of those and declare that one the ‘actual’ one, because it hates ambiguity. The idea of holding opposite ideas or being in several states at the same time has its famous counterpart in physics: Schröders cat.
Schröder as opposed to Boole, was very interested in duality: concepts needn’t be either or, could very easily be and and. This is very well expressed in his famous cat dilemma. Unfortunately I was’t able to find reference to Schröders cat dilemma on the internet. But I can describe it briefly: you are looking at a device with a cat in it. If you open the device, you could kill the cat by opening it. But it is also possible that the opening of the de device did not kill the cat, that it was already dead. You don’t know after opening: therefore the cat is in two states at the same time: dead and living. You think this is bullshit? Won’t blame you, if you think so, but actual this dilemma is a ‘macro’ description of a very normal phenomenon in quantum mechanics.
This is a parallel for research. The research itself interferes with reality. It is not possible to separate research and action. The outcome of the research is not revealing an ‘objective’ truth that is out there to be discovered (such as looking for a pebble in the ground). The outcome is not just there, it is formed by research. This concept is common knowledge in physics, but it is often ignored in social research. Look at the ‘Obama’ story. Asking questions about ‘whom will you vote for’ presuppose that you as a respondent sort of know that: you just have to look within your own mind to find the ‘Obama’ or the ‘MacCain’ pebble. As if it is a simple notion. In fact the respondents do not really know what they will be voting for when the ‘real decision’ has to be made. You could argue that all of the voters are in several states, and that the chances of the one state over the other can be bigger in one person than in the other. On top of that, the research results are absolutely influencing the endstate: if I can trust that Obama wins, the chances might increase for his opponent or the other way round. Research is part of the reality, can’t be separated from it. This is where quantum mechanics meet politics.
In quantum mechanics the concept of ’several states’ is quite normal, the system is forced to chose one state as a consequence of the research (the system being watched). No ‘true or false’ in quantum mechanics: true, false ánd something in between. Marketing directors have a big problem with this concept in their consumers. It is more comfortable and easy to understand opinions as ‘fixed state’ and ’simple’ items. So often the research can be viewed as opening the cats door, killing the cat as a consequence.