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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... discussions on many aspects of the book manuscript , and for the especially warm welcome they gave me upon my arrival to Santa Cruz . I am especially grateful to Joseph Rouse and Donna Haraway for the inspiration of their respective ...
... discussion of Bohr's views on objectivity and accountability . ) In summary , the shift from Heisenberg's interpretation to Bohr's under- mines the very premise of the play . Frayn structures the play around the assumption that moral ...
... discussion of representational- ism — the idea that representations and the objects ( subjects , events , or states of affairs ) they purport to represent are independent of one another . I dis- cuss some of the problems , difficulties ...
... discussion . ) In chapter 6 , I consider how agential realism can contribute to a new materialist understanding of power and its effects on the production of bodies , identities , and subjectivities . This chapter specifically engages ...
... discussion of experiments that directly address questions of the nature of identity , time , and matter . As before , I try to make this chapter accessible to readers who have no background in physics . Physicists will also find much to ...
Contents
Part II Intraactions Matter | 95 |
Part III Entanglements and Reconfigurations | 187 |
Notes | 405 |
References | 477 |
Index | 493 |