Schrödinger’s Cake

In Schrödinger’s famous but not always accurately reported thought experiment, a cat is sealed in a box with a radioactive atom, a flask of poison, and a hammer poised to break the flask. If the atom decays, a Geiger counter detects it and trips the hammer which breaks the flask, releasing the poison to kill the cat. But if it doesn’t (apparently close to a 50/50 proposition), the cat lives. Until we open the box, the cat exists in “superposition”, simultaneously both dead and alive.

As absurd as Schrödinger’s cat may be in “real life”, at a particle level physicists tell us things can be and not be at the same time, or exist simultaneously in two different locations, or behave simultaneously in opposite ways such as spinning clockwise and counterclockwise, essentially the notions underlying quantum physics.

Christians are familiar with the words of the Book of Hebrews written thousands of years earlier than Schrödinger: “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” Nearly every religion and faith system takes for granted that what we see, hear, and touch is not the sum total of reality.

First Nations have traditionally taught that while we are all part of the “here and now” universe, we are in a very real way also part of the past and the future.

This is not meant to be a Coles Notes version of quantum physics or theology, but a reminder that there’s much more to life than what we can grasp in our hands. “What you see is what you get,” may apply to a transaction, but it falls far short when we consider life, or a lifetime, or our fate, or our duties to ourselves, our close circle, our world, or the future of the planet.

All too often we get fixated on the “here and now”, angry at our “fate”, or make plans as if everything is linear and certain. The sages have always urged us to look beyond the horizon. Such thinking simultaneously keeps us humble but liberates us to dream big.

It may well be that Schrödinger’s cat really can have its cake and eat it, too.