When You Look into the Box, the Cat Winks Back

In the first week of November 2025, as the United Nations marks the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ 2025), Kerala has added its own creative turn to the celebration. The Centre for Science in Society (C-SiS) at the Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT), in collaboration with the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP), has launched the Quantum Cat campaign – a science exhibition and outreach movement that travels across ten districts. The exhibition opened on November 7 at CUSAT and will run through December, bringing to schools, colleges and communities an experience of the  “quantum century”.

But this is not just another science event. It gets underway at a critical moment when anti-science attitudes and pseudoscientific beliefs are gaining ground, encouraged by a political climate that seeks to rewrite knowledge through ideology. The Sangh Parivar’s attempts to dilute and distort scientific theories in curricula and promote mythical claims at official science events reflect a major crisis – the erosion of scientific temper, a constitutional duty that India once proudly upheld. Against this background, the campaign acquires crucial social meaning – it defends reason itself.

KSSP president Meera Bhai told this author that the initiative “seeks to promote science and scientific inquiry from the school level onwards”, continuing a long tradition that began with the Parishad’s legendary Halley’s Comet campaign in 1986. Then, too, KSSP fought superstition by turning fear into curiosity. Today, as irrationality resurfaces in new forms, such as astrology apps, miracle cures and so-called Vedic science on WhatsApp, Quantum Cat becomes a new mascot of rational inquiry.

Recent findings from Kerala Padanangal 2.0, KSSP’s statewide social survey, show that one in three people in Kerala still depend on astrology to make life decisions – a surprising figure in a state known for high literacy and human development. This coexistence of reason and belief, science and superstition, is precisely the paradox the campaign seeks to address.

A century of quantum science

The International Year of Quantum Science and Technology commemorates a hundred years since the birth of quantum theory, the most successful and puzzling scientific framework ever devised. When Max Planck proposed in 1900 that energy comes in discrete “quanta” he began a revolution. Alfred Einstein used that idea to explain light as particles, Neils Bohr built his model of the atom, Werner Heisenberg introduced the uncertainty principle and Erwin Schrödinger described matter as waves.

Together, they showed that at the subatomic level, nature defies common sense. In the quantum world, particles exist in multiple states at once – a phenomenon called superposition – and remain mysteriously connected across vast distances through entanglement. Observation itself determines outcomes, making the observer part of reality. This radical idea – that measurement changes what is measured – has transformed every field of science.

Today, quantum principles underlie technologies that define modern life, from lasers and semiconductors, to solar cells and GPS. They are now driving quantum computing and quantum communication, promising faster problem-solving and unbreakable data security. In chemistry and biology, quantum mechanics explain the structure of molecules, the efficiency of photosynthesis and even how birds sense magnetic fields.

For some scientists, quantum mechanics defies classical explanation, operating in a realm where causality is uncertain and probability replaces determinism. Physicist Babu Joseph, former vice-chancellor of CUSAT, explained it precisely to this writer. “Schrödinger’s cat captures the essence of quantum mechanics, which asserts that there is no observer-independent reality. The standard binary – exist or not – isn’t true. There can be combinations of varying degrees of possibilities until the observer interacts with the system,” he said. That insight lies at the heart of the superposition principle, the backbone of quantum mechanics.

Also read: What Is the Many-Worlds Theory of Quantum Mechanics?

Quantum science thus transforms how we see both matter and meaning. It teaches that reality is not fixed but relational, not given but discovered through interaction – a lesson as relevant to society as to physics.

The cat in the box: from paradox to possibility

Schrödinger’s famous cat was never real. Conceived in 1935, it was a thought experiment to expose the absurd implications of early quantum theory. In Schrödinger’s imaginary box, a cat’s life depends on a random atomic event. Until someone opens the box, the cat is both alive and dead – a paradox meant to question how far quantum laws can extend into the visible world.

Modern physics resolves the puzzle through decoherence: real cats interact with their environment, collapsing the ambiguity (about their existence) long before observation. However, the Quantum Cat survived in imagination, literature and popular science – precisely because it dramatises the central mystery of observation and reality. It asks a timeless question: Can we know the world without changing it? For KSSP’s campaigners, this cat is a metaphor for scientific curiosity. It provokes questions like 'How can something be alive and dead at once?' 'What does observation mean?' and in doing so, it invites thinking, reasoning and dialogue.

The cat also teaches humility. It reminds us that nature does not always obey our common sense and that our perceptions are limited. In a society where superstition often pretends as wisdom, such humility is a moral necessity. As Meera Bhai noted, “KSSP’s science campaigns have always connected wonder with reason – from Halley’s Comet to the Quantum Cat – to make people see the beauty of questioning.”

Used symbolically, Schrödinger’s cat bridges imagination and logic. It tells students that science is not dry or distant but full of wonder and paradox. It shows that curiosity and creativity belong together. And in public life, it becomes a counter-symbol – against fatalism, dogma and blind belief.

The quantum imagination

Over the past century, quantum ideas have reached far beyond laboratories. Philosophers and social scientists have drawn inspiration from them to describe how knowledge, power and perception influences reality. Just as a quantum particle exists in many states until observed, societies too can hold contradictory realities – rational and irrational, secular and superstitious – until events or actions “collapse” them into visible form.

Sociologists spoke of coexistence and contradiction in social life. Quantum metaphors give these old insights new meaning. They show that uncertainty is not ignorance but complexity – that understanding society requires observing it critically, always aware that observation itself changes outcomes.

In this sense, the observer effect is not limited to physics. Every social study, every public debate, every act of journalism alters what it observes. Recognising this responsibility – the role of agency – is a vital part of both scientific and civic inquiry. The Quantum Cat, seen in this light, becomes a symbol of reflective citizenship: one that questions, observes and acts, knowing that observation affects reality.

Also read: Debate: To Stop Superstition, We Need Viable Ethical Perspectives, Not More Science

The link between science and society defines KSSP’s legacy. Founded in 1962, it has grown beyond a science club into a people’s science movement, connecting empirical reasoning with social progress. Its campaigns on the environment, energy, health and education have always sought to make knowledge democratic and life-oriented. The Quantum Cat campaign continues this mission, using a global scientific breakthrough to renew Kerala’s commitment to rational thought.

From Halley’s Comet to Quantum Cat, the message remains the same – science belongs to the people. In 1986, KSSP volunteers explained that comets were celestial bodies, not omens, and forty years later, they travel again, showing that the cat is a metaphor for observation and reason. The persistence of astrology and pseudo-science reveals that education alone cannot ensure enlightenment. What is needed, as KSSP calls vijnanabodh, is the consciousness of science as a way of life – anchored in curiosity, scepticism and empathy.

Toward a culture of reason

The Quantum Cat campaign, therefore, is not just a celebration of physics. It is a cultural intervention, telling us that science and democracy share the same foundation – reasoned freedom. In an era when faith is marketed as fact and propaganda as knowledge, the defence of reason becomes a moral act.

Quantum theory offers a powerful metaphor for today’s struggle between reason and unreason. It shows that reality is not binary but a field of probabilities shaped by interaction – just as social progress depends on participation, dialogue and openness. The spirit of quantum thought underlines democratic inquiry. In this sense, KSSP’s Quantum Cat invites young minds to look into the “box” of their own world to question, observe and think freely. It tells us that curiosity is not disobedience, doubt is not weakness and imagination is part of knowledge.

As Babu Joseph said, “The Newtonian cat is either dead or alive; the quantum cat is both – until you look.” So too with society,  it holds both reason and prejudice, until we choose which one to see. The campaign restores science’s humane meaning, not as apparatus but as a way of knowing that dignifies life and keeps curiosity alive amid ideological darkness.

The author is Director, Inter University Centre for Social Science Research, Mahatma Gandhi University, who earlier served as Senior Professor of International Relations and Dean of Social Sciences. 

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