Quantum superposition has long been the hallmark of weirdness in physics. A particle is not here or there, but both. A cat is not alive or dead, but entangled with both outcomes. From the perspective of relational cosmology, these paradoxes become invitations: not to puzzle over what is “really there,” but to ask what is meaningful—and when.
Let’s reframe.
Superposition as Potential Meaning
In our model, a quantum superposition is not a ghostly coexistence of states, but a structured field of potential meaning. It is not that the electron is in multiple places, but that multiple construals are available to be actualised.
The wavefunction encodes these alternatives—not as a set of secret facts waiting to be revealed, but as an array of meanings that have not yet been instantiated. Just as the possibilities of a poem reside in its unread lines, the possibilities of a particle reside in its unconstrued potential.
Until a meaner instantiates a meaning, the system remains in potential: unmeant, and thus undetermined.
Indeterminacy Is Not Vagueness
This is a crucial point. Indeterminacy is often conflated with ambiguity or lack of knowledge. But in a relational cosmology:
Indeterminacy is the structured absence of instantiation.
It is not that we don’t know where the particle is—it is that it is not anywhere until its location is actualised through meaning. Space and time are dimensions of meaning instances. Without instantiation, they do not apply.
In this view, superposition is a coherent system of structured potential, and collapse is the act of construal that selects one meaning to be instantiated—an unfolding through time of what was previously a silent chord.
The Meaner Makes the Difference
So, what collapses the wavefunction?
Not measurement in the abstract. Not instruments alone. It is the meaner—the being who construes an observation as meaningful—that actualises one meaning from the array. The cat is not dead or alive until that meaning is brought forth by construal. And once it is, the alternatives are no longer meaningful. They are not “real but hidden”—they are no longer potential at all.
This is not the solipsism of Berkeley, nor the divine voyeurism of a cosmic observer. It is a participatory ontology in which reality emerges in relation—not from a thing being looked at, but from a meaning being made.
Schrodinger’s Poetry
What, then, are we to make of a superposed system?
It is not a muddle, but a poised multiplicity. A quantum system in superposition is like a poem that has not yet been read aloud. It contains all its cadences, metaphors, and turns of phrase—but none of them have yet been sung. There is structure, yes. But no voice yet.
The cat’s box, in this reading, is not a tomb or cradle. It is a page of unwritten story—until a meaner opens it.
Closing Reflection
Superposition is not an artefact of strangeness. It is a mark of potential. Indeterminacy is not a failure of knowledge, but a sign that meaning has not yet been made.
In a relational cosmos, the world is not a set of fixed facts, waiting to be revealed, but a vast and shifting potential for construal. A poem in a thousand drafts.
And when a meaner finally reads the lines?
The universe unfolds—not as fact, but as meaning.
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