Revised comment on the paper titled "The Origin of Quantum Mechanical Statistics: Insights from Research on Human Language

TL;DR

This paper critiques a recent analogy between word frequency distributions and Bose-Einstein statistics, highlighting methodological issues and questioning the strength of the proposed connection to quantum physics.

Contribution

It provides a critical analysis of the analogy between linguistic rank-frequency data and quantum statistical models, emphasizing methodological limitations.

Findings

Identifies normalization issues in the analogy

Questions the identification of rank with energy

Highlights weak baseline comparisons

Abstract

This short note comments on \citet{Aerts2024Origin}, which proposes that ranked word frequencies in texts should be read through the lens of Bose--Einstein (BE) statistics and even used to illuminate the origin of quantum statistics in physics. The core message here is modest: the paper offers an interesting analogy and an eye-catching fit, but several key steps mix physical claims with definitions and curve-fitting choices. We highlight three such points: (i) a normalization issue that is presented as "bosonic enhancement", (ii) an identification of rank with energy that makes the BE fit only weakly diagnostic of an underlying mechanism, and (iii) a baseline comparison that is too weak to support an ontological conclusion. We also briefly flag a few additional concerns (interpretation drift, parameter semantics, and reproducibility).