On 04/11/2009, Steve Bennett wrote:
On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 12:37 PM, Ian Woollard
wrote:
Schroedinger's cat very definitely is
fictitious; it's not an
experiment you can actually do and get an alive/dead cat that you can
actually see, you would get either an alive cat, or a dead cat.
I agree with the statement that it should not be in that category.
Essentially, because schrodinger's cat is not a cat.
Schrodinger's cat is a fictitious cat that is in the Schrodinger's
cat
thought experiment.
It is fictitious because it is not a factual cat; it is countrafactual.
There is no notable fiction in which
Schrodinger's cat features heavily, for example.
It is notably in "Schroedinger's cat" thought experiment.
That's what a thought experiment is; it's a made up story about what
would happen if you did X,Y,Z which is used to illuminate aspects of
physics.
I would be inclined toward keeping it in the category, but mostly
because of subsequent references in works of science fiction. In common
usage there is a tendency to ignore the difference between "fictitious"
and "fictional". With reference to the original concept of
Schrodinger's cat it is fictitious because it is imaginary; it is not
fictional because it is not part of a work of fiction.
Ec