Does a literary term exist for the following situation?
---
Someone thinks they have demolished an argument with reductio ad absurdum, but then their apparently-absurd conclusion is accepted anyhow, as a mere paradox.
---

An example of this would be the paradox of Schrondinger's cat. Schrondinger hated the idea of quantum superposition (a particle is in two states at once). He devised his thought experiment with the dead/living cat as a reductio ad absurdum argument against superposition. However, the physics community essentially turned it on its head, and said "yes, it seems to be paradoxical, but the cat is indeed both alive and dead at the same time, and superposition remains true."

I can think of some other examples, and would like to refer to these examples as a class. However, I imagine that there's already a literary term for situations like this. Much thanks!

It's not an interpretation I've ever heard that Schrödinger (or anglicized to Schroedinger -- no n before the d) was trying to disprove something with his though experiment. Also, I don't think there's anyone who believes this is true as applied to cats -- Einstein wrote "Nobody really doubts that the presence or absence of the cat is something independent of the act of observation."

FWIW, I usually hear Schrödinger pronounced SHRAY-din-jer. Is that acceptable "English"? A professor of mine used to make me knutz by chattering on about Girdle and Gerta (Gödel and Göthe).

Oops, it's definitely not "Schro*n*dinger" :-) I don't know how I got that 'n' in there!

-Matt

p.s. - More Schrodinger comments for those interested...

That he was trying to show flaws in Heisenberg's idea (superposition) can be seen with some Googling; I was reminded of it recently while reading "Decoding the Universe", a book about information theory, which makes Schrodinger's hostility explicit. I found a reference to Schrodinger's paper introducing the cat paradox, and his tone is clear:
"One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, ..." [1]

The Einstein quote you included is part of a letter to Schrodinger, in which Einstein says, essentially, "You're the only one who gets it!" The problem is that Einstein and Schrodinger were in the minority. Einstein never, ever came to terms with the weird implications of quantum theory. It essentially left him out of the loop of particle physics research for the last few decades of his life.

Heisenberg's position, AKA the Copenhagen interpretation, was the dominant response to the cat paradox for about 50 years. (Since then, the majority view is that the cat quickly "decoheres" into either a dead or living state, due to thermodynamic leakage of information (so I gather, and speaking roughly)).

---
[1] E. Schrödinger, ``Die gegenwartige Situation in der Quantenmechanik,'' Naturwissenschaftern. 23 : pp. 807-812; 823-823, 844-849. (1935). English translation: John D. Trimmer, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 124, 323-38 (1980), Reprinted in Quantum Theory and Measurement, p 152 (1983).
Found at http://www.mtnmath.com/faq/meas-qm-3.html

Schroedinger's thought experiment falls apart when you realise that the cat knows whether it is dead or not. It's like the tree that fell in the forest. The raccoons and deer and foxes all heard it fall.

As far as I'm concerned a paradox is merely a measure of our inability to completely understand a situation.

Shouldn't that be gögling?

Perhaps ignoratio elenchi in a derivative sense?

Quote:

---

It's like the tree that fell in the forest. The raccoons and deer and foxes all heard it fall.

---

Bwahahaha!

Berkeley tried to resolve the vertiginous implications of Cartesian idealism by stating that even without an observer everything persists in the mind of God. But who needs God! As Faldage seems to be suggesting, it is the uniform distribution of raccoons and deer and foxes through the universe that yields the real solution.

Bwahahaha!