Schrödinger’s Cat

The most famous feline in science-lore is, beyond controversy, Schrödinger’s cat. In a recent article (subscription required) in the Wall Street Journal, science writer Sharon Begley wrote about the implications of the gedanken experiment, how the weird quantum behavior of subatomic particles can actually affect the “real world,” i.e., the world as we normally perceive it, with deterministic laws, etc. (I believe Ms. Begley was somewhat mistaken about the experimental setup: it is not the particles that smashes the vial, but an apparatus such as a Geiger counter which, depending on its count, triggers something that in turn smashes the vial. But those are just details.) There are philosophical implications on epistemology as well: what is the state of a system before anyone has observed it?

But this article reminded me of a friend, whose application of the gedanken experiment was perhaps the boldest and most comic. He made quantum analogy of the state of a lady’s heart, and proceeded to observe that state. Being somewhat of a nerd, he preambled his overture to the lady with a description of Schrödinger’s cat, how it is necessary that he should disturb (perturb) the system in order to observe it, to learn its state. Of course, the setup of Schrödinger’s cat is somewhat macabre, so he had to modify it: instead of a cyanide vial, he used paints. And thus he presented his overture to the lady with whom he was infatuated, and he was, not surprisingly, turned down. I laughed at his approach: probably only a physicist would have appreciated his analogy. But he retorted that the lady at the end was gracious to soften the blow by saying that this analogy was a good opening. At least he now knows the state of the lady’s heart.

The moral of the story: even though a woman’s heart is as mysterious as a quantum system, one should avoid Schrödinger’s cat in one’s romantic pursuit.