Between Knowing and Deciding — Explanatory Humility and the Two‑Slit Experiment

Before turning to entanglement, John Gribbin pauses to qualify the discussion of the two‑slit experiment. The passage is careful, restrained, and explicitly anti‑naïve. Precisely for that reason, it is worth examining closely.

“It isn't that things like electrons are seen behaving as both wave and particle at the same time. They seem to travel through the experiment like waves, but they seem to arrive at the detector screen like particles. Sometimes they behave as if they were waves, sometimes they behave as if they were particles. The as if is very important. We have no way of knowing what quantum entities ‘really are’, because we are not quantum entities. We can only make analogies with things we have direct experience of, such as waves and particles.”

At first glance, this looks like exemplary scientific caution. Gribbin explicitly rejects the crude idea that electrons are waves or are particles, emphasises the metaphorical status of both descriptions, and warns against taking either literally. But this apparent humility does important conceptual work — and not all of it is benign.

The work done by “as if”

The phrase as if appears to suspend ontological commitment. Electrons behave as if they were waves, as if they were particles — but are neither. Yet this very suspension quietly preserves a deeper assumption: that there is something electrons really are, over and above the phenomena we observe, and that wave and particle descriptions are merely imperfect stand‑ins for that hidden reality.

The caution does not dissolve the ontological question; it stabilises it. The reader is invited to set aside naïve literalism, but not to question the representational framing itself. The mystery is relocated, not removed: if electrons are neither waves nor particles, what are they really?

From the perspective of relational ontology, this is already a misstep. There is no further “what it really is” waiting behind phenomena. Phenomena are not appearances of an unconstrued substrate; they are first‑order meanings — outcomes intelligible only in relation to the structured potential that makes them possible. The as if does not neutralise realism; it preserves it while appearing to be cautious.

Travel, arrival, and illicit process metaphysics

Gribbin’s formulation also relies on a familiar but problematic narrative:

“They seem to travel through the experiment like waves, but they seem to arrive at the detector screen like particles.”

Here, a continuous process is smuggled in. Something is imagined as persisting through space and time, behaving one way during transit and another at arrival. But nothing in the formalism requires such a story. There is a structured potential — characterised by the wavefunction — and there are discrete detection events. There is no fact of the matter about how an electron “travels” between source and screen.

By narrating potential as behaviour in time, instantiation is misdescribed as a transition: wave‑like becoming particle‑like. The appearance of duality is then treated as a puzzle about how one thing changes its nature mid‑flight, rather than as a category error arising from conflating structured potential with actualised events.

“Sometimes they behave…”

The phrase “sometimes they behave as if they were waves, sometimes as if they were particles” introduces a further slippage. It suggests that electrons themselves vary their mode of behaviour from occasion to occasion, as though they possessed a repertoire from which different responses are selected.

But what varies is not the electron; it is the construal. Wave‑like descriptions characterise structured potential. Particle‑like descriptions characterise actualised detection events. These are not modes the electron switches between; they are different theoretical articulations corresponding to different cuts.

Once again, explanatory strain arises because variability is located in the entity rather than in the perspectival framing.

Epistemic humility and the return of the noumenal

Gribbin continues:

“We have no way of knowing what quantum entities ‘really are’, because we are not quantum entities.”

This sounds modest, but it introduces a strong metaphysical commitment: that quantum entities have a determinate nature “in themselves” which is inaccessible to us. The limitation is framed as epistemic — we cannot know — rather than as a misplaced ontological demand.

Relational ontology rejects this move. There is no unconstrued reality hiding behind phenomena, waiting to be accessed by a more suitable kind of observer. Construal is not a limitation on access to reality; it is constitutive of what counts as real. The appeal to our non‑quantum status quietly reinstates a Kantian split between appearance and noumenon, even as the text warns against naïve realism.

Analogy as crutch rather than constitution

Finally, Gribbin treats analogy as a second‑best substitute:

“We can only make analogies with things we have direct experience of…”

Here, analogy is framed as epistemically deficient — a workaround forced on us by our cognitive limitations. But this again misidentifies the source of the problem. Wave and particle are not inadequate approximations to a truer description; they are different ways of articulating different aspects of the same structured potential. All meaning is relationally construed. There is no more literal description waiting in reserve.

A hinge moment

This passage matters because it sits precisely between two kinds of explanatory strain. In the two‑slit experiment, electrons are said to “know” the experimental setup. In entanglement, they will be said to “decide” outcomes across space. Here, Gribbin pauses, reins in the metaphors, and urges caution.

But the caution itself preserves the framework that makes later metaphors feel necessary. By retaining process narratives, representational realism, and a hidden “really is,” the mystery is kept alive — disciplined, respectable, and ready to re‑emerge.

Seen this way, the passage is not a solution but a stabiliser. It prepares the ground for the next chapter, where electrons will no longer merely behave as if — they will appear to decide.