Containment Blend

I would like to discuss the idea that Fauconnier asserts about containment blends. Containment blends consist of the five coorespondences of cross-space mapping:

- a container blocks visibility of any object it holds
- "a contained object occupies part of the same portion of space as its container;" it moves with the container when the container is moved
- a container is bigger than the object it contains
- a container has an inside
- containers have boundaries (274).

The main point that bothers me is that a contained object occupies part of the same portion of space as its container. This is not true. It is physically impossible in three dimensions for two objects to occupy the same space at the same time. This is the opposite of one object being in two places at once. The balance is that each object can only occupy one space at a specific time. The problem comes with particle theory and heisenberg's uncertainty principle at the atomic level. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle states that an electron has a probability of being in a certain spot in the electron cloud at one particular time, and that electrons can be at two places at once. If this is true, then two objects may be able to share the same space at once since electrons in their atomic structures can be at multiple places at the same time. What I am not certain of is whether different electrons can occupy the same space at the same time. I would argue no, since electrons are supposed to not be attracted to each other. However, electrons do collide, and may occupy the same space during a collision. The idea that two visible objects can occupy the same space at the same time still seems impossible to me, since the natural world does not seem to work that way.
Fauconnier even recognizes the fact that containers have boundaries. In the real world, objects do not cross the boundary without becoming something else, while in the computer world an object can cross the boundary of a container without changing its characteristics. Some objects on the computer do not occupy the same space as another object when they are placed together, since one object can still be moved without moving the second object. An example is two different windows with different programs running. One may place one window on top of another, but still access the window below without accessing both windows. If you move a window covering another window, only the top window moves. Therefore windows stack in layers, not occupying the same space. In this way, two-dimensional objects may actually occupy a three dimensional space. However, when one icon is placed over another, that icon is entered into the program files of the stationary icon. When the stationary icon is moved, it moves all of its components including the added icon with it. In that sense two objects may occupy the same space. However, the stationary icon may be just a container, which would mean that anything within that container cannot occupy the same space in the real world, but can for the computer world. In conclusion, Fauconnier's example of containers and contained objects cannot be linked between the real world and the computer world, because the computer world performs what is impossible in the real world.