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Dr. Solri's Language Clinic - Latest Q's & A's
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 11:56 amQ: When people talk about making a "quantum leap", what do they mean?
A: An unpredictable change that is fortunately so small that it can only be detected by very expensive scientific instruments.
Q: What is the origin of the phrase "think outside the box"?
A: This is another term borrowed from quantum physics. In the famous Schroedinger's Cat thought experiment, a cat is placed in a box, along with a gun controlled by a decaying radioactive particle. Due to quantum indeterminacy, we cannot know at any point whether the cat is alive or dead. In fact, according to some physicists, until you open the box, the cat is both alive and dead, and it is the act of opening the box that flips it into a universe in which it is either alive or dead. (If I've misinterpreted this, don't blame me; I'm a linguist, not a physicist.) "Outside the box" thus refers to the state in which we cannot possibly know whether the cat is alive or dead (or even both at the same time), so "thinking outside the box" came to mean "making a wild guess because you can't possibly know what's going on," and it is this sense we should assume when managers tell us to think outside the box.
Q: I am editing an article by an American author for a British trade journal. Should I leave "optimization" as it is, or change it to "optimisation"?
A: Neither, since the word "optimization", however spelled, does not exist in British English. You should change it to "window-dressing".
Q: When people talk about "pushing the envelope", what is the envelope in question?
A: The phrase has been attributed to the mathematical concept of the envelope as the enclosing boundary of a set of curves. However, only mathematicians have supported this attribution. A related theory involves test pilots and the theoretical limits of a plane's performance. In fact, the term has a more prosaic origin among postal workers, and refers to the practice of bending large envelopes in order to stuff them into small letter boxes, regardless of possible damage to the contents. Consequently, when your boss says "We need to push the envelope here," it means "I don't care how shoddy the work is, just get the job done by the deadline."
A: An unpredictable change that is fortunately so small that it can only be detected by very expensive scientific instruments.
Q: What is the origin of the phrase "think outside the box"?
A: This is another term borrowed from quantum physics. In the famous Schroedinger's Cat thought experiment, a cat is placed in a box, along with a gun controlled by a decaying radioactive particle. Due to quantum indeterminacy, we cannot know at any point whether the cat is alive or dead. In fact, according to some physicists, until you open the box, the cat is both alive and dead, and it is the act of opening the box that flips it into a universe in which it is either alive or dead. (If I've misinterpreted this, don't blame me; I'm a linguist, not a physicist.) "Outside the box" thus refers to the state in which we cannot possibly know whether the cat is alive or dead (or even both at the same time), so "thinking outside the box" came to mean "making a wild guess because you can't possibly know what's going on," and it is this sense we should assume when managers tell us to think outside the box.
Q: I am editing an article by an American author for a British trade journal. Should I leave "optimization" as it is, or change it to "optimisation"?
A: Neither, since the word "optimization", however spelled, does not exist in British English. You should change it to "window-dressing".
Q: When people talk about "pushing the envelope", what is the envelope in question?
A: The phrase has been attributed to the mathematical concept of the envelope as the enclosing boundary of a set of curves. However, only mathematicians have supported this attribution. A related theory involves test pilots and the theoretical limits of a plane's performance. In fact, the term has a more prosaic origin among postal workers, and refers to the practice of bending large envelopes in order to stuff them into small letter boxes, regardless of possible damage to the contents. Consequently, when your boss says "We need to push the envelope here," it means "I don't care how shoddy the work is, just get the job done by the deadline."
