Abstract

The cognition of quantum processes raises a series of questions about ordering and information connecting the states of one and the same system before and after measurement: Quantum measurement, quantum in-variance and the non-locality of quantum information are considered in the paper from an epistemological viewpoint. The adequate generalization of ‘measurement’ is discussed to involve the discrepancy, due to the fundamental Planck constant, between any quantum coherent state and its statistical representation as a statistical ensemble after measurement. Quantum in-variance designates the relation of any quantum coherent state to the corresponding statistical ensemble of measured results. A set-theory corollary is the curious in-variance to the axiom of choice: Any coherent state excludes any well-ordering and thus excludes also the axiom of choice. However the above equivalence requires it to be equated to a well-ordered set after measurement and thus requires the axiom of choice for it to be able to be obtained. Quantum in-variance underlies quantum information and reveals it as the relation of an unordered quantum “much” (i.e. a coherent state) and a well-ordered “many” of the measured results (i.e. a statistical ensemble). It opens up to a new horizon, in which all physical processes and phenomena can be interpreted as quantum computations realizing relevant operations and algorithms on quantum information. All phenomena of entanglement can be described in terms of the so defined quantum information. Quantum in-variance elucidates the link between general relativity and quantum mechanics and thus, the problem of quantum gravity. The non-locality of quantum information unifies the exact position of any space-time point of a smooth trajectory and the common possibility of all space-time points due to a quantum leap. This is deduced from quantum in-variance. Epistemology involves the relation of ordering and thus a generalized kind of information, quantum one, to explain the special features of the cognition in quantum mechanics.