The Quantum Theory of Life

In Physics, quantum mechanics is a theory that describes the world in atomic scale. It is probabilistic in construction, and claims that everything is non-deterministic with the famous uncertainty principle. To put things more mathematical, this theory uses wavefunction to describe the wave particle duality behaviour of matter and energy. Any wavefunction can be written in terms of a linear combination of basis state, which resides in the Hilbert space. The modulus square of the coefficients give the probability of that state, and they are normalized. When a measurement is made, the eigenvalue of one state will be observed. I shall not go on to the collapse of the wave-function interpretation as they are highly debatable.

Now if we want to define our life, we can think of it in terms of defining a wavefunction, in a very similar way that we define the state of matter. For example, the languages we speak can form a basis state, with the coefficient representing how well we speak that language. In my case, it can be approximated easily as (using Dirac notation for wavefunctions) |Yun> = 1/sqrt(2) |Chinese> + 1/sqrt(2) |English> . However, this is approximation, as I know a few words of Japanese and German, but they definitely don't count as the coefficient would have at least 20 zeros after the decimal point.

Another interesting basis set we can use is the countries we have stayed in. In this highly globalized world, more and more people are born in one place, raised in another, and working or studying in a third country. Maybe for some none of these are their ethnic native country. Quantum theory somehow can sort of model this highly dynamics society.

So what is your wavefunction?