top of page

living + dead

in = parts

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 that 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 first atomic decay would have poisoned it. 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.

bottom of page