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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... physicist Samuel Devons ( who was a student of Ernest Rutherford ) un- knowingly opened up a new world for me . Teaching in that laboratory , preparing experiments , and negotiating with magnificent pieces of old equipment , I began to ...
... physicist Werner Heisenberg paid a visit to his mentor Niels Bohr in Nazi - occupied Denmark . Bohr , who was of Jewish ancestry , was head of the world - renowned physics institute in Copenhagen that bears his name . Hei- senberg ...
... physicist have the moral right to work on the practical exploitation of atomic energy ? " Heisenberg's haunting question to Bohr hangs in the air throughout Copenhagen . But for its playwright , Michael Frayn , this moral question is a ...
... physicists would do all they could to prevent such an application of atomic science , " in direct contradiction of the story Heisenberg tells to Jungk , which is later embellished by Powers . How does Frayn react to this revelation ? He ...
... physicist have the moral right to work on the practi- cal exploitation of atomic energy ? Margrethe : The great collision . Bohr : I stop . He stops Margrethe : This is how they work . Heisenberg : He gazes at me , horrified . Margrethe ...
Contents
Part II Intraactions Matter | 95 |
Part III Entanglements and Reconfigurations | 187 |
Notes | 405 |
References | 477 |
Index | 493 |