Can physics. A subject that often become the most boring thing in your high school class. Be an another form of Philosophic thinking? Truth be told, it is.



"One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of the hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.

It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks."
-Charles Shrodinger


What you have read by now is the famous "Shrodinger's cat thought experiment".

In a nutshell it means,
A cat is, placed in a box. Now once the cat has been placed in the box, put a radioactive isotope with a fifty percent chance of decaying within the hour or not decay. Once that is in place, put a vial of poison that would shatter should that radioactive isotope decay...or not. Now seal the box and wait for an hour. (Yes the box is air tight, yes the cat WILL die from suffocation). Now think about it, is the cat alive or dead? Or quite possible that the cat is BOTH alive AND dead. The only we way we can find out about the current state of said cat would be to open the box within the hour and only then will one find out if the cat is alive or well...not. Because of the unpredictability of the radioactive particles, it is quite possible that the cat is in both states of living and death, in which once we open it the cat will be in a state (here is where it gets weird) according to our dimension (parallel universes) the cat could be alive or dead. (Its a weird idea which is based on Coppenhagen's interpretation that subatomic particles are neither here nor there but they are everywhere at one place and at one time (just like the concept of omnipotence). And that they "collapse" into measurable amounts within the moment it is measured.)

But take a pause for a second don't mind all the scientific mumbo jumbo, and look at overall thought experiment. Look closely and one would realize, This is the allegory of the cave in scientific form!

Allow me to elaborate on this...
A run through of the allegory of the cave.
Imagine a group of people from childbirth to their adult lives, that they are chained within a cave. Their heads are bound so they only see a wall their eyes shielded from peeking to the sides allowing them to only see the shadows produced from the "fire from the sky". Is it not possible that they would assume that the shadows is their world if this is what one can consider ignorance would it not be bliss as they have not known better? Now what if one of them was suddenly freed and thrust into the world of that "fire from the sky" now called the "sun". What would that man do? Wouldn't his world be changed forever? If so wouldn't you find it within your heart to "enlighten" your fellow prisoners trapped within the cave? And once you attempt to enlighten those people how would they react? How would they react if you told them that their happiness is in fact a lie? Would it not be quite within the realms of human nature to defend their happiness? Then I suppose you have figured out that the "enlightened one" is also a "dead one" for spreading such heresy. That is pretty much what the allegory of the cave is.


Now how does this relate to "Schrodinger's cat?" well for starters, the "Cat in the box" talks about is "who is the observer?" us or the cat. Just as the allegory of the cave, who is has the "real" knowledge us who are outside of the cave or those who are locked up inside the cave. If one ponders it even closer could it not be possible that the we are not also within a cave, and that all we are escaping to is into another cave, and another, and another? The same issue told by the the thought experiment in terms of dimensions, could it be that in another world would be similar to us only that well the cat is dead or maybe we are the cat who knows? In a thematic sense they both are about knowledge. One is in the cave while the other refers to the box. Both are sealed from "reality". Yes there is some parallels that can be drawn. But that can be done with anything. What makes this "Schrodinger's cat" a version of the allegory of the cave, or that this "thought experiment" is in fact philosophical is that it opens your mind to thoughts once bound by the laws of nature and society and isn't that was philosophy is all about?