Schroedinger’s Cat: What the hell is up with this cat? Is it even really a cat? Is he related to Skimpleshanks or Rum Tum Tugger? Does the cat have special powers? Does he sleep with Pavlov’s Dogs?
Please someone enlighten me!!
The answer, of course, is one of the master’s classics. I have used it several times to impress those who claim to know. To show someone up, and to do it in verse, is a wonderful thing…
[http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1-122.html](schrodinger’s cat)
The answer, of course, is one of the master’s classics. I have used it several times to impress those who claim to know. To show someone up, and to do it in verse, is a wonderful thing…
[http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_122.html](schrodinger’s cat)
thanks brother
IIRC, Ursula K. LeGuin wrote a short story about Shroedinger’s Cat appropriately called, Shroedinger’s Cat.
There is also an awesome a cappella group in Texas called [url=“http://mac3.a-cappella.com/prodinfo.asp?number=2630C&variation=&aitem=192&mitem=247”]Schroedinger’s Cat.
Please feel free to correct me 
Wasn’t Heilein’s " the cat who walked through wall’s "
on this subject ?
IMHO not one of his better works 
( Long time no read … )
Please feel free to correct me
Wasn’t Heilein’s " the cat who walked through wall’s "
on this subject ?
Not really. I forget just what the book was about but the cat was a character that kept appearing in odd places. It was named Shroedinger’s cat IIRC, and they described the thought experiment, but that is the only connection, again IIRC.
Heinlein’s book isn’t about Schroedinger’s cat. To tel the truth, I can’t remember what it’s about.
Robert Anton Wilson also wrote a book called “Schroedinger’s cat”. In Dan Simmons’ “Endymion” and “The Rise of Endymion” (from which Aenea undoubtedly gets her cognomen)the titular Raul Endymion is sentenced to death inside a “Schroedinger Cat Box”.
I’ve got a cartoon up on my cubical wall of “Schroedinger’s Dog”. He’s whispering his idea for an experiment involving the cat into the ear of a sleeping Schroedinger.
The Heinlein book is actually about a cross-time, cross-dimensional effort to save a sentient computer. Go figure.
The title cat is Pixel, who is a living representation of the subjective nature of reality in Heinlein’s future history–he doesn’t know he can’t walk through walls, so he can (at least, that’s the theory). The cat demonstrated the ability to traverse mundane walls, alternate realities, and time itself. Neither the book nor the cat have anything to do with Schroedinger’s poor hypothetical kitty, beyond a joking reference or two.
I love Cecil. LOL.
Heinlein’s book is about sex, time travel, and alternate universes, in that order. I like Heinlein, but he does have a tendancy to go overboard on sex and politics, unless it’s one of his juveniles. As an aside, I’ve heard that the sequel to The Cat that Walked through Walls, To Sail Beyond the Sunset, was even worse. The Cat in question was a kitten named Pixel, who had the unexplained (at least in the first book) ability to pass through solid objects.
Thanks to the miracle of the Internet, you can now test this unusual theory yourself. Just go here:
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~jsw/Schroedinger.html
and click the “Run the experiment, Professor” button at the bottom of the page.
<digression mode=“SF criticism”>
This Heinlein book was also after the point where, IMO, he had deteriorated to the point of unreadability. The unfortunate fact was that at the end of his life he could have sent in his used toilet paper and they would have published it. Somewhere along the line, he lost the ability to adequately edit his own drafts, and his publishers either didn’t have the nerve, or didn’t care as long as it would sell.
Alfred Bester was another in a long line of SF writers who simply deteriorated into maundering blather at the end of their careers. Sad.
This is one reason I like Robert Silverberg - he has had a LONG career without losing it, and generally getting better as he went along - not that I like everything he’s done, but “Hot Sky at Midnight” is fairly recent and was solid and original work. I could utterly strangle him for the ending of “Face of the Waters”, though.
When Robert Anton Wilson wrote the “Schrodinger’s Cat” trilogy, his schtick was wearing pretty thin. Read “The Illuminatus Trilogy” instead.
</digression>
Schrodinger: Wasn’t he the guy that wrote “101 Uses for a Dead Cat… or Not”?
[small hijack]Yeah, I gotta agree with yabob to some degree. The Illuminatus! Trilogy is better. But Schrodinger’s Cat trilogy is still very good. The only problem was most people that don’t like it feel that way because they thought it was a true sequel to Illuminatus!. It isn’t, and just includes some of the same characters. Though I must admit that I liked Illuminatus! much more. [/small hijack]
Basically the book follows movement between universes as the previous ones are destroyed every hundred pages or so. Thus where the title comes from. To quote Cecil about the theory:
If that’s not confusing, the nuclear dance
Of electrons and suchlike is governed by chance!
The universe and the people in it change, like the electrons that change by chance. Men change into women, and vice-vera. Just thought I’d clarify the
Cal, do you have an electronic copy of this that you could post to me or somewhere, as it makes a change from the Far Side catfud one & once I explain quantum mechanics to my dogs, I’m sure they’ll love it…
& yes, I know this is a personal message in a board,but Cal doesn’t have a mail tag at the base (& I think I forgot to do mine too…)