On the notion of a macroscopic quantum system

Abstract

It is proposed to define "quantumness" of a system (micro or macroscopic, physical, biological, social, political) by starting with understanding that quantum mechanics is a statistical theory. It says us only about probability distributions. The only possible criteria of quantum behaviour are statistical ones. Therefore I propose to consider any system which produces quantum statistics as quantum ("quantumlike"). A possible test is based on the interference of probabilities. I was mainly interested in using such an approach to "quantumness" to extend the domain of applications of quantum mathematical formalism and especially to apply it to cognitive sciences. There were done experiments on interference of probabilities for ensembles of students and a nontrivial interference was really found. One could say that the quantum statistical behaviour might be expected. But the problem was not so trivial. Yes, we might expect nonclassical statistics, but there was no reason to get the quantum one, i.e., cos-interference. But we got it!