Metaphor as entanglement

The concept of entanglement is coined by the theory of quantum information to designate that special correlation of two or more quantum entities. Furthermore, it means an exactly defined mathematical structure grounded on Hilbert spaces and underlying all phenomena of entanglement studied by quantum mechanics.

That same structure can be utilized for a mathematical model of metaphor as a special kind correlation between the meanings and senses of two or more words. The philosophical core of the model can be described so: Metaphor restricts the meaning of a term by the meaning of another term in a probabilistic, loose way calling for interpretation.

The introduction of that underlying mathematical structure allows of establishing unambiguous correspondence between metaphor and entanglement in an absolutely exact, mathematical way, after which measurement in quantum mechanics corresponds to interpretation in language: This determines some interpretations of a given metaphor as more probable, but no one can be excluded.

The term utilized as metaphor restricts the area of meaning of its object to a small true subset of it. That set can ground the essential features, properties or relations of the object of the metaphor pioneering the scientific or even formal definition of the term serving as the object of the metaphor at issue. Thus some metaphor founds any scientific notion therefore “erasing” the grounding metaphor and the rest interpretations except one of them. The corresponding phenomena in quantum information is the process of de-coherence, after which the interacted object is cut off from its environment just as a rigorously defined notion is cut off from its context to designate one and the same in any context.

The opposed process can be observed both by the theory of metaphor and that of quantum information: A notion begins to lose its clear outlines coined in everyday speech and media accumulating new and new interpretations and uses. A quantum entity analogically starts to lose the measured values of the quantities as if dissolving in the common and inseparable whole of the universe. The suggested mathematical structure describes equally well both processes representing its interpretations.

The outlined approach allows a common philosophical viewpoint to the physical world, language and some mathematical structures therefore calling for the universe to be understood as a joint physical, linguistic and mathematical universum, in which physical motion and metaphor are one and the same rather than only similar in a sense.

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