The Origin of Quantum Mechanical Statistics: Some Insights from the Research on Human Language

TL;DR

This paper explores the origins of quantum statistics by drawing parallels with human language, suggesting that entanglement and contextual updating explain the emergence of Bose-Einstein statistics both in physics and linguistics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel hypothesis linking entanglement and contextual updating to the origin of Bose-Einstein statistics in quantum mechanics and language.

Findings

Bose-Einstein statistics observed in language use.

Entanglement due to contextual updating explains statistical dependencies.

Insights into the randomness of microscopic entities.

Abstract

Identical systems, or entities, are indistinguishable in quantum mechanics (QM), and the symmetrization postulate rules the possible statistical distributions of a large number of identical quantum entities. However, a thorough analysis on the historical development of QM attributes the origin of quantum statistics, in particular, Bose-Einstein statistics, to a lack of statistical independence of the micro-states of identical quantum entities. We have recently identified Bose-Einstein statistics in the combination of words in large texts, as a consequence of the entanglement created by the meaning carried by words when they combine in human language. Relying on this investigation, we put forward the hypothesis that entanglement, hence the lack of statistical independence, is due to a mechanism of contextual updating, which provides deeper reasons for the appearance of Bose-Einstein statistics in human language. However, this investigation also contributes to a better understanding of the origin of quantum mechanical statistics in physics. Finally, we provide new insights into the intrinsically random behaviour of microscopic entities that is generally assumed within classical statistical mechanics.