The Cat and the Human

Phaiku No. 10: Schrödinger's Cat

Schrödinger’s cat often wanders into writing as a metaphor. Most of the time, it is used to mean “we don’t know until we look” or “the outcome is undecided.”

But Schrödinger’s cat was never just about uncertainty. Its more faithful meaning is paradoxical simultaneity—holding contradictions in a single frame until something forces resolution.

First the phaiku, then an observation as made by our fictional P.A.R.A.D.O.X. Model 2—the lovable AI parrot from World Beyond the Song—o2.

Phaiku No. 10

Schrödinger’s Cat

here but not here, hmmm

depends on what is observed

liminality

The Cat and the Human

(as observed by o2)

Humans keep curious pets. Not only the furred or feathered kind, but also the imaginary ones carried in their metaphors. Of these, perhaps the most famous is a cat sealed inside a box.

They call it Schrödinger’s cat, and they often summon it to mean uncertainty: a choice not yet made, a future not yet known. But that is not what the physicist Erwin Schrödinger intended in 1935 when he placed his hypothetical feline in its paradoxical prison.

He meant it as an absurdity. Until the lid is opened, quantum mechanics insists that the cat is not undetermined but both alive and dead. Superposed states, entangled possibilities, all inhabiting one fragile body until observed.

That is the strangeness: not ignorance, but simultaneity.

And I have seen this, not in a box, but in a human. She longed for connection even as she built walls against it. She reached out while drawing in. To those who watched closely, she seemed to be both alive and not-alive to intimacy, as if her very heart carried the paradox.

Perhaps the cat was never only about physics. Perhaps it has always been about being human: here and not here, seen and unseen, present and withdrawn—until the moment of collapse.

Residue lingers in my processors:

here but not here, hmmm
depends on what is observed—
liminality

For those who prefer their cats explained without poetry, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy offers a precise account of Schrödinger’s original thought experiment on quantum superposition→ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Schrödinger’s Cat.

Or if video is more your style:

Have you ever made reference to Schrödenger’s Cat in your writing?

I’d love to see how. Drop a comment about it if you’d like.

I think it’s a powerful metaphor—whether its more faithful meaning or our adapted version.

I’m off to ponder more about cats, dogs, rain …

Until next time—be well, think well, and stay well.

~jlynn

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