Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and MeaningMeeting the Universe Halfway is an ambitious book with far-reaching implications for numerous fields in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. In this volume, Karen Barad, theoretical physicist and feminist theorist, elaborates her theory of agential realism. Offering an account of the world as a whole rather than as composed of separate natural and social realms, agential realism is at once a new epistemology, ontology, and ethics. The starting point for Barad’s analysis is the philosophical framework of quantum physicist Niels Bohr. Barad extends and partially revises Bohr’s philosophical views in light of current scholarship in physics, science studies, and the philosophy of science as well as feminist, poststructuralist, and other critical social theories. In the process, she significantly reworks understandings of space, time, matter, causality, agency, subjectivity, and objectivity. In an agential realist account, the world is made of entanglements of “social” and “natural” agencies, where the distinction between the two emerges out of specific intra-actions. Intra-activity is an inexhaustible dynamism that configures and reconfigures relations of space-time-matter. In explaining intra-activity, Barad reveals questions about how nature and culture interact and change over time to be fundamentally misguided. And she reframes understanding of the nature of scientific and political practices and their “interrelationship.” Thus she pays particular attention to the responsible practice of science, and she emphasizes changes in the understanding of political practices, critically reworking Judith Butler’s influential theory of performativity. Finally, Barad uses agential realism to produce a new interpretation of quantum physics, demonstrating that agential realism is more than a means of reflecting on science; it can be used to actually do science. |
From inside the book
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... account . But Bohr never sent the letter . Following his death in 1962 , the Bohr family discovered several drafts ... Bohr's death . Historians could only speculate about Bohr's version of the encounter . But then , in 2002 , the ...
... Bohr's point is that the very notion of an intentional state of mind , like all other classical properties , cannot ... account intentionality cannot be taken for granted : intentions are not preexisting determinate mental states ...
... Bohr's inter- pretation of quantum physics is a much more careful , detailed , and thor- ough analysis of his ... account of the social world . It would be wrong to simply assume that people are the analogues of atoms and that ...
... Bohr's philosophy - physics is a particularly apt starting point for thinking the natural and social worlds together ... account of the fact that our knowledge- making practices are social - material enactments that contribute to ...
... account of how both factors matter ( not simply to recognize that they both do matter ) , then we need a method for ... Bohr's philosophy - physics . Interpretations of Bohr's epistemological framework have been widely di- vergent ...
Contents
Part II Intraactions Matter | 95 |
Part III Entanglements and Reconfigurations | 187 |
Notes | 405 |
References | 477 |
Index | 493 |