Anaxagoras proposed “in everything there is a portion of everything,” a notion as bizarre as the most popular interpretation of quantum theory, the Copenhagen. A piece of gold, say, contains gold as well as everything else—copper, wheat—but appears as a distinct golden object because its gold portion is the greatest. But no part of the object is pure. Every part of the golden object is also simultaneously watery, milky (and all other materials), and black and white (and all opposite qualities). In the Copenhagen interpretation, before an observation, something (an electron, Schrödinger’s cat) is all opposite qualities simultaneously, too, with each quality described by a unique probability (“portion”) to actually occur. The cat is both dead and alive; the electron spins simultaneously both clockwise and counterclockwise. Only after the observation, the cat is found either dead or alive, and the object, as Anaxagoras would say, definitely golden, yellow, and dry.
New Trends in Studies of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory