Copenhagen Interpretation of Performance

January 16th, 2007 Fred McVittie Posted in Centre, Copenhagen Interpretation, Energy, Performance |

Part of the successful implementation of the Copenhagen interpretation of Bohr and Heisenberg is an attitude toward the mechanisms of quantum theory, the ‘mechanics’ itself, which is best described as ‘agnostic’. For example, the famous ‘double slit’ experiment of Young describes an entity called a ‘probability wave’ which governs the path and location of specific photons of light which pass through the slits. However, according to Heisenberg, since this probability wave cannot itself be measured this wave is not to be regarded as an actual physical entity, but rather as a kind of mental scaffolding which helps us to interpret the results of the experiment. The (imaginary) wave does not exist in the (quantum) world, but functions as a tool to allow us to think of that world. This ‘model agnosticism’ extends to the theories, equations and formulae which are the effective descriptors of those aspects of the world which are beyond personal embodied experience. Such theories also do not describe the world but describe what kind of model we need to create in order to be able to think of the world, and such models are always, eventually, grounded in embodied sensory experience.

A parallel process may be in operation within some performer training systems which make extensive reference to entities which have no material reality. These include concepts of ‘centre’, ‘energy’, etc. Whilst such concepts may well have no physical existence they may function as components within a model of the world in which a certain sort of performance behaviour is optimally produced.