So, I'm thinking maybe something along the lines of "Reading Subatomically: Toward a Quantum Literary Criticism." Too pretentious? Of course it is! I'm still working on digging up the (probably enormous amount of) literary criticism that (already) deals with what I'm attempting to articulate.
Hey--if we can do it with Darwin, we can do it with Einstein. And Everett. And Schrodinger and Heisenberg. And so on.
In the meantime, some more ruminations (from this morning):
The "participant observer" notion (which Professor Bartine connected to my last transmission) is indeed integral to quantum physics (so far as I understand it after two weeks of reading about it). The assumption Everett most notably sought to address was that of Bohr and other proponents of the Copenhagen interpretation, which, among other things, accounted for the oddly potential "superposition" of subatomic particles by suggesting that they "collapse" into one of their possible states only at the moment in which they are measured (observed). Everett notes a lecture he attended in which Einstein expressed his doubts about this interpretation by saying that he wasn't inclined to believe a kitten could change the workings of the universe simply by looking at it.
There is a strange thing going on with this issue of the observer. In classical physics, is was generally assumed, of course, that the observer was passive, disinterested, and had no active role in "what happened" amongst and between the things he was observing. Then the Copenhagen folks come along and say that the observer is in fact in a direct causal relationship with the measured behavior of that which is being observed (though only, that is, on the subatomic, quantum level). Then we have Einstein's relativity and Everett's many-worlds, both of which suggest (in different ways) that the observer's perspective is undoubtedly a factor, but only within an "objective" system of laws. In other words, the universe follows certain laws, but these are in fact laws of probability, certain only insofar as they are uncertain, which leaves the observer both subjected to them and, in some strange way, unable to observe them. So I'm still not sure if quantum theory on the whole asserts that nature is a construct and completely a matter of subjective interpretation, or if it is systematic in a way we simply cannot understand, or if it is somehow relatively objective and objectively relative.
At any rate, there are some issues here I find worth pursuing. I'm presently halfway through a book called Other Worlds by Paul Davies, which is essentially an attempt to put all of this stuff into layman's terms. I'm intrigued by the potential for a kind of literary criticism here--sort of reading literature subatomically. Most (though not all) of the criticism I'm finding that tries to incorporate physics in any way is basically attuned to issues/themes of "the bomb," which is not what engages me here. Again, while the postmodern issue of "doubling" is indeed a possible path, I'm more interested in the issues arising out of things like Einstein's theory of relativity and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle--specifically in how they have the potential to recast our perceptions/assumptions about time, not just in a quantum physical sense, but in a historical and bodily sense (Everett would figure heavily into this as well). I'm not sure what would come of it, but I think it would be interesting to put these quantum interpretations in direct conversation with more familiar literary ideas such as Keats' negative capability (particularly with regard to Heisenberg, and also to the discovery of the subatomic particle's ability to maintain a "negative energy") and, more pointedly, Foucault's conceptions of time, history, and the event, and the body's place within these. And hey, why not some Heidegger, too?
29 July 2009
27 July 2009
Quantum Thesis Part II: Spacetime
I'm presently reading a book called Other Worlds: A Portrait of Nature in Rebellion (1980) by a fellow called Paul Davies. Davies is essentially trying to describe the oft-ignored or unrealized implications of the very existence of the field of quantum physics, and attempting to do so in such a way that a layman (like me) can understand it. I'm only about 50 pages in, but he's recently introduced Einstein's theory of relativity (heard of it??), suggesting of course that time and space behave quite differently for one observer than they might for another, depending on the location and motion of each. Davies has introduced Minkowski's suggestion from 1908 that "we cease thinking about space and time altogether, and think instead about spacetime." Davies assures us that this suggestion "is not just a four dimensional monstrosity invented by mathematicians to confuse people, but a much more accurate and indeed simpler model of the real world than Newton's" (43). To demonstrate this, Davies proffers the following explanation:
[Spacetime's] significance is revealed by simple examples such as the spacetime extension of the human body. It obviously has extension in space (about six feet) and duration in time (about seventy years), so it therefore has extension in spacetime. What makes this statement more than a truism is that the two extensions, spatial and temporal, are not independent...viewed from a rocket, on Earth a man might look three feet tall and live for one hundred and forty years. . . It turns out that a change of speed acts rather like a rotation in spacetime; specifically, by altering one's velocity, one rotates one's four dimensional body away from space into time or vice versa. Thus, the Earthman's spacetime extension remains unaltered when viewed from the rocket; he merely has three feet of his bodily length twisted into seventy years of his life! (43-4)
Even though Minkowski postulated spacetime in friggin' 1908, and even though I have heard the term "spacetime" before, I have never once been prompted to consider space and time as this sort of intermingled monstrosity. In fact, this seems, to me, to be in absolute opposition to the way space and time are conceived in literary studies (at least in the "relatively" (get it?) small chunk of it I've encountered). Think, for example, of the modernists, who (generally speaking) sought to undermine temporality by overdetermining the fixed spatial image. In other words, the two have seemingly always been at odds with one another, placed in an ever-reversing binary opposition for each generation of philosophers, artists, and critics to flip or unflip according to the mood of the day. I'm interested, then, in exploring the literary ramifications of not man's physical place in the world, nor his temporal position (that is, his be-ing), but rather his spacetime dimension. I'm also fairly certain that Mr. Davies here will soon tie this stuff to Hugh Everett's theory in a way that will allow me to pursue that as well. Sounds fun, right?
As per my discussion with Mr Shawn Jasinski some time ago, perhaps I should take a closer, more critical look at The Time Traveler's Wife (which I have long loved for almost purely narrative and sentimental reasons) and see what turns up. I'm guessing that particular novel has been "beneath" the lofty radar of literary critics thus far, so it might be a good place to make a mark.
Onwards and upwards!
[Spacetime's] significance is revealed by simple examples such as the spacetime extension of the human body. It obviously has extension in space (about six feet) and duration in time (about seventy years), so it therefore has extension in spacetime. What makes this statement more than a truism is that the two extensions, spatial and temporal, are not independent...viewed from a rocket, on Earth a man might look three feet tall and live for one hundred and forty years. . . It turns out that a change of speed acts rather like a rotation in spacetime; specifically, by altering one's velocity, one rotates one's four dimensional body away from space into time or vice versa. Thus, the Earthman's spacetime extension remains unaltered when viewed from the rocket; he merely has three feet of his bodily length twisted into seventy years of his life! (43-4)
Even though Minkowski postulated spacetime in friggin' 1908, and even though I have heard the term "spacetime" before, I have never once been prompted to consider space and time as this sort of intermingled monstrosity. In fact, this seems, to me, to be in absolute opposition to the way space and time are conceived in literary studies (at least in the "relatively" (get it?) small chunk of it I've encountered). Think, for example, of the modernists, who (generally speaking) sought to undermine temporality by overdetermining the fixed spatial image. In other words, the two have seemingly always been at odds with one another, placed in an ever-reversing binary opposition for each generation of philosophers, artists, and critics to flip or unflip according to the mood of the day. I'm interested, then, in exploring the literary ramifications of not man's physical place in the world, nor his temporal position (that is, his be-ing), but rather his spacetime dimension. I'm also fairly certain that Mr. Davies here will soon tie this stuff to Hugh Everett's theory in a way that will allow me to pursue that as well. Sounds fun, right?
As per my discussion with Mr Shawn Jasinski some time ago, perhaps I should take a closer, more critical look at The Time Traveler's Wife (which I have long loved for almost purely narrative and sentimental reasons) and see what turns up. I'm guessing that particular novel has been "beneath" the lofty radar of literary critics thus far, so it might be a good place to make a mark.
Onwards and upwards!
Quantum Thesis Part I: Initial Ruminations
I've spent the past few days trying to articulate what it is my master's thesis will attempt to address. Being the obsessive Eels fanatic that I am, I recently watched the episode of Nova called "Parallel Lives, Parallel Worlds," which follows Eels frontman Mark Oliver Everett (aka E) in his quest to piece together the history of his sometime-quantum-physicist father, Hugh Everett III. Hugh's 1957 doctoral dissertation ("Theory of the Universal Wave Function") has been at turns lauded and ridiculed in the scientific community (for its thought-provoking departure from orthodox scientific inquiry, on the one hand, and its seemingly preposterous practical implications on the other). I started thinking about how I might incorporate this into some kind of literary criticism, and I (very hurriedly and tentatively) came up with this:
"This study would employ as its point of departure the view that Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man is fundamentally an attempt to deconstruct the metaphysical American conception of history by undercutting its claim to a divinely sanctioned "origin" by which its trajectory is determined. The novel portrays the Confidence-Man's avatars as "beginnings," events so drenched with potentiality as to be wholly immune to subsumption into the dominant unilinear history. As opposed to proffering or affirming any kind of fixed historical "origin" for either the (assumed) character of the Confidence-Man or for the faulty dispensation he discloses through his "masquerade," Melville's genealogy purposefully admits the kind of illogical, anti-paradigmatic "events" that are normally violently subdued or neutralized in the dominant history discourse of the West--ruptures in time that grant the Confidence-Man recourse to an infinite reserve of ideational and identical possibilities. His amorphism confounds the construction and identification of self, identity, origin, and indeed history itself--perhaps even "America" as we (think we) know it. More specifically, though, this study will take these "events" one step further, analyzing them in light of Hugh Everett's theory of quantum mechanics, which posits the existence of multiple worlds or universes that account for any and all possible outcomes of any given "event." Thus the novel will be considered not as a linear series of avatars and interactions, bound by the privileged perspective of the progression of history, but rather as an event occurring simultaneously in multiple realities. Hardly an element thrown in for curiosity's sake, then, Everett's theory is precisely what most thoroughly capitalizes on the potentiality of an event, for it suggests not simply the occurrence of one of many possibilities, but literally all potential beginnings. The study will therefore engage The Confidence-Man in an attempt to discover what issues/complications/ideas/subversions arise in the blending of Everett's conception of "many worlds" with Foucault's and Said's considerations of ours."
Now, I conceived this having never read so much as a word of Everett. In fact, my formulations relied almost entirely on the Nova episode and, sadly enough, what I'd read of his theory on Wikipedia. Following a trip to the Science Library (ugh), a chat session with Prof. David Bartine, and some focused reading of Everett and a guy called Bryce DeWitt, I jotted down the following (with some dismay):
"While it seems radical and exploding with possibility on its face, Everett's theory is really an attempt to be all-inclusive--to subsume all aspects of experiential life, both on the macroscopic and microscopic levels, into a "universal" system of quantum mechanics. As the Copenhagenists and others knew, or at least thought they knew, there is some kind of disconnect--in fact, discontinuity--between the macroscopic and microscopic worlds. This is of course the basis for the field of quantum physics: Why is it that things on the quantum level do not follow the rules and laws of the macroscopic, "classical" level of physics? How can we account for these differences, and is there a way to glean a set of laws out of the quantum universe as well--to map it as Newton and others mapped the classical realm? In effect, Everett's theory does away with these concerns by attempting to make discontinuity an impossibility. By extrapolating the phenomenon of the "superposition" in quantum mechanics--whereby a foundational piece of matter (an electron, for example) is able to occupy more than one space at one time, or to spin at more than one velocity at one time, etc--Everett forces all the phenomena of being, from the quantum to the cosmological, into one "universal" system of laws. Hence, what appeared to me at first to be an affirmation of the singularity of the "event" through a radical potentiality for different outcomes--that is, the many-worlds interpretation of reality, in which other possibilities are not merely suggested, as in Foucault's notion of the event, but that they all actually happen--is actually a formalism of the most staunch order, allowing for no interruptions/discontinuities whatsoever. Where the event appears to explode, where there appears the most illogical, discontinuous occurrences, this is precisely the point at which there is no room for any such errancy. What I had originally thought, in my ignorance, was a perspective that allowed for the radical singularity of the event is in fact a full-throated attempt to domesticate such singularities, to coerce them into a universal system that forbids such errancies from ever taking place. Everett's theory, despite seeming erratic and borderline whacko in a philosophical sense, is really about as relentlessly and violently logical as it is possible to be [I could cite numerous examples of his cow-eyed invocation of the "logical" in his thesis]. The problem, of course, is that he belonged to the one branch of science that not only admits the singular, the anti-universal, the illogical and errant, but indeed revels in it. Of all scientific pursuits, only in quantum physics, it seems, can an espousal of the universal be the radical, peripheral position."
While this element of his theory is interesting (at least to me), I wasn't satisfied with the idea that I would have to dismiss his theory out of hand because of its universalizing formalistic tendencies. So I thought about it a bit more and tried to formulate a kind of rudimentary apology for Everett. It went something like this:
"And yet if we know (so far as observing scientifically is "knowing") that each proton and electron in an "object" (such as a human body) is behaving, relatively speaking, in accordance with its assigned wave function, is it so bizarre, or (to invoke the word pejoratively) so "formalistic" to assume that an amalgam of particles so behaving, being composed entirely of such particles, would behave in the same way? If an electron in my arm is physically in two places at once, and my arm is largely made up of untold numbers of such electrons, each occupying two different positions in space, then how could the macroscopic sum of said electrons possibly not be in two places as well? Is it even thinkable to postulate a tangible, physical whole that is entirely independent of--and in fact operates in absolute opposition to--the physical state of its constituent parts? Is Everett's position really a fetishistic allegiance to a formalistic logic, erroneously believed to be beyond the constructedness of truth and scientific discourse, or does it contain germs of philosophical merit? Can the measured behavior of such particles really be dismissed as merely an invention of the observer, whether a human or synthetic measurement apparatus, thereby negating the veracity of the claim? It seems to me that Everett's particular brand of (for lack of a better word) "formalism" is only undeserving of serious consideration at that point in which we take linguistic deconstruction to its furthest, afunctional extreme.
Everett's theory, furthermore, provides what amounts to a particularly useful indictment of one of the long-revered and seldom questioned aspects of scientific pursuits. I speak here of the privileging of the Observer, the detached and disinterested supersubject who gazes panoptically and objectively upon a system from the outside. Foucault, in a completely different manner (obviously), has convincingly dismantled this privileged position as well, a position which man has fallaciously assigned himself in art, philosophy, science, history, and nearly every other conceivable pursuit since time immemorial. In the article accompanying the publication of Everett's abridged theory in the July 1957 edition of "Reviews of Modern Physics," John Wheeler (Everett's adviser and the director of his dissertation) writes that Everett's theory radically suggests that "the ultimate observing equipment" in the classical dispensation that in Everett's day (and probably even now) determined a great deal of the perspectives held by many quantum physicians "still lies outside the system that is treated by a wave equation. As Bohr so clearly emphasizes," Wheeler continues, "we always interpret the wave amplitude by way of observations of a classical character made from outside the quantum system" (151). However, unlike virtually every other scientific perspective up to that point, Everett's theory treats acts of observation as "normal interactions that occur within a system, not as a new and different kind of process that takes place from without" (151). In other words, Everett's characterization accounts for the discontinuity bred of the subjectivities of observers, rather than offering up the observer's perspective as one completely and inherently disinterested. This is undoubtedly a valuable side-effect of his (otherwise disconcertingly objective-sounding) dissertation."
A bit wordy. The question now is. . .How the hell am I supposed to incorporate this into a piece of literary criticism?
"This study would employ as its point of departure the view that Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man is fundamentally an attempt to deconstruct the metaphysical American conception of history by undercutting its claim to a divinely sanctioned "origin" by which its trajectory is determined. The novel portrays the Confidence-Man's avatars as "beginnings," events so drenched with potentiality as to be wholly immune to subsumption into the dominant unilinear history. As opposed to proffering or affirming any kind of fixed historical "origin" for either the (assumed) character of the Confidence-Man or for the faulty dispensation he discloses through his "masquerade," Melville's genealogy purposefully admits the kind of illogical, anti-paradigmatic "events" that are normally violently subdued or neutralized in the dominant history discourse of the West--ruptures in time that grant the Confidence-Man recourse to an infinite reserve of ideational and identical possibilities. His amorphism confounds the construction and identification of self, identity, origin, and indeed history itself--perhaps even "America" as we (think we) know it. More specifically, though, this study will take these "events" one step further, analyzing them in light of Hugh Everett's theory of quantum mechanics, which posits the existence of multiple worlds or universes that account for any and all possible outcomes of any given "event." Thus the novel will be considered not as a linear series of avatars and interactions, bound by the privileged perspective of the progression of history, but rather as an event occurring simultaneously in multiple realities. Hardly an element thrown in for curiosity's sake, then, Everett's theory is precisely what most thoroughly capitalizes on the potentiality of an event, for it suggests not simply the occurrence of one of many possibilities, but literally all potential beginnings. The study will therefore engage The Confidence-Man in an attempt to discover what issues/complications/ideas
Now, I conceived this having never read so much as a word of Everett. In fact, my formulations relied almost entirely on the Nova episode and, sadly enough, what I'd read of his theory on Wikipedia. Following a trip to the Science Library (ugh), a chat session with Prof. David Bartine, and some focused reading of Everett and a guy called Bryce DeWitt, I jotted down the following (with some dismay):
"While it seems radical and exploding with possibility on its face, Everett's theory is really an attempt to be all-inclusive--to subsume all aspects of experiential life, both on the macroscopic and microscopic levels, into a "universal" system of quantum mechanics. As the Copenhagenists and others knew, or at least thought they knew, there is some kind of disconnect--in fact, discontinuity--between the macroscopic and microscopic worlds. This is of course the basis for the field of quantum physics: Why is it that things on the quantum level do not follow the rules and laws of the macroscopic, "classical" level of physics? How can we account for these differences, and is there a way to glean a set of laws out of the quantum universe as well--to map it as Newton and others mapped the classical realm? In effect, Everett's theory does away with these concerns by attempting to make discontinuity an impossibility. By extrapolating the phenomenon of the "superposition" in quantum mechanics--whereby a foundational piece of matter (an electron, for example) is able to occupy more than one space at one time, or to spin at more than one velocity at one time, etc--Everett forces all the phenomena of being, from the quantum to the cosmological, into one "universal" system of laws. Hence, what appeared to me at first to be an affirmation of the singularity of the "event" through a radical potentiality for different outcomes--that is, the many-worlds interpretation of reality, in which other possibilities are not merely suggested, as in Foucault's notion of the event, but that they all actually happen--is actually a formalism of the most staunch order, allowing for no interruptions/discontinuit
While this element of his theory is interesting (at least to me), I wasn't satisfied with the idea that I would have to dismiss his theory out of hand because of its universalizing formalistic tendencies. So I thought about it a bit more and tried to formulate a kind of rudimentary apology for Everett. It went something like this:
"And yet if we know (so far as observing scientifically is "knowing") that each proton and electron in an "object" (such as a human body) is behaving, relatively speaking, in accordance with its assigned wave function, is it so bizarre, or (to invoke the word pejoratively) so "formalistic" to assume that an amalgam of particles so behaving, being composed entirely of such particles, would behave in the same way? If an electron in my arm is physically in two places at once, and my arm is largely made up of untold numbers of such electrons, each occupying two different positions in space, then how could the macroscopic sum of said electrons possibly not be in two places as well? Is it even thinkable to postulate a tangible, physical whole that is entirely independent of--and in fact operates in absolute opposition to--the physical state of its constituent parts? Is Everett's position really a fetishistic allegiance to a formalistic logic, erroneously believed to be beyond the constructedness of truth and scientific discourse, or does it contain germs of philosophical merit? Can the measured behavior of such particles really be dismissed as merely an invention of the observer, whether a human or synthetic measurement apparatus, thereby negating the veracity of the claim? It seems to me that Everett's particular brand of (for lack of a better word) "formalism" is only undeserving of serious consideration at that point in which we take linguistic deconstruction to its furthest, afunctional extreme.
Everett's theory, furthermore, provides what amounts to a particularly useful indictment of one of the long-revered and seldom questioned aspects of scientific pursuits. I speak here of the privileging of the Observer, the detached and disinterested supersubject who gazes panoptically and objectively upon a system from the outside. Foucault, in a completely different manner (obviously), has convincingly dismantled this privileged position as well, a position which man has fallaciously assigned himself in art, philosophy, science, history, and nearly every other conceivable pursuit since time immemorial. In the article accompanying the publication of Everett's abridged theory in the July 1957 edition of "Reviews of Modern Physics," John Wheeler (Everett's adviser and the director of his dissertation) writes that Everett's theory radically suggests that "the ultimate observing equipment" in the classical dispensation that in Everett's day (and probably even now) determined a great deal of the perspectives held by many quantum physicians "still lies outside the system that is treated by a wave equation. As Bohr so clearly emphasizes," Wheeler continues, "we always interpret the wave amplitude by way of observations of a classical character made from outside the quantum system" (151). However, unlike virtually every other scientific perspective up to that point, Everett's theory treats acts of observation as "normal interactions that occur within a system, not as a new and different kind of process that takes place from without" (151). In other words, Everett's characterization accounts for the discontinuity bred of the subjectivities of observers, rather than offering up the observer's perspective as one completely and inherently disinterested. This is undoubtedly a valuable side-effect of his (otherwise disconcertingly objective-sounding) dissertation."
A bit wordy. The question now is. . .How the hell am I supposed to incorporate this into a piece of literary criticism?
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