The Black Hole of Quantum Theory
N. Katherine Hayles
In Quirks of the Quantum, Samuel Chase Coale argues that the twentieth century is the quantum era, riddled with all of the indeterminacies, blurriness, and entanglements that he attributes to quantum theory, which he describes as the “philosophical basis for quantum physics” (1). He acknowledges that “to truly understand quantum mechanics as a science, one would have to study mathematics,” which he readily admits his book does not undertake. Instead, he relies on the “tropes, metaphors and models” (ibid.) that scientists have published about the implications of quantum theory. He thus distinguishes mathematical formulae from philosophical constructions, privileging the latter over the former. Philosophy, however, does not provide a “basis” for quantum mechanics; rather, quantum mechanics describes the phenomena, and then philosophy struggles with what the physical theory implies.Coale makes wide-ranging references to what quantum physicists, including Neils Bohr, have thought about these implications. Strangely, he does not include in his account Karen Barad's excellent Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. A former physicist, Barad develops the quantum philosophy of Neils Bohr into an approach she calls agential realism, which insists that humans and nonhumans are ineluctably bound together in the production of meaning. She argues that quantum mechanics demonstrates the “ontological inseparability of intra-acting agencies,” which emerge as separate entities only as a result of “cuts” we make to simplify phenomena and render them susceptible to measurement and analysis (148). Although her conclusions are similar to Coale's, her approach is distinguished by a deep knowledge of quantum mechanics as a mathematical theory, and her formulations are rigorous and precise. Her absence from Coale's book is the more notable because his analysis needs an infusion of the kind of deep thinking that Barad embodies. By contrast, his book engages in a discursive inflation of quantum physics, wherein the rigor and precision it has as a physical theory is buried under an avalanche of verbiage that makes quantum physics appear so broad and vague that almost anything can fit under its umbrella.A good example of this problem is the way in which Coale uses “entanglement.” In quantum mechanics, it refers to the correlation of the quantum characteristics of two subatomic particles. For example, when two photons interact (say, by pumping a laser beam through a nonlinear crystal such as beta-barium borate, which splits some of the photon stream into photon pairs with correlated polarizations), they can become entangled such that their wave functions (i.e., the eigenstates described by their superpositions) are coordinated. If they are then separated, measurement on one of them determines how the wave function for the other will collapse, even if they are by then far apart. The distance (and time intervals) separating the two photons can be quite large; entanglement has been shown to operate as far removed as fourteen miles. Moreover, it also operates on the macroscale, for example in the ability of migratory birds to sense the inclination of the earth's magnetic field (via entangled electrons in the molecules of their eyes). This is mysterious to the extent that no one knows how or why the particles become coordinated, but it is nevertheless quite distinct from such uses of “entanglement” that would include, for example, two lovers becoming entangled with one another or the World Bank becoming entangled in the global economic system. Citing Patrick O'Donnell, Coale appropriates the word to mean, following O'Donnell, “the complex relationship between self, objects, and the world” (164), which stretches the meaning so far that it leaves quantum mechanics (or quantum theory, as Coale would have it) far behind.In similar fashion, Coale assimilates to quantum theory most of deconstruction, especially the indeterminacy, undermining of origins, and undecidability that Jacques Derrida brilliantly developed in Of Grammatology and later works. He does the same with postmodernism, so that it begins to seem almost a branch of quantum physics rather than a philosophical and cultural movement with complex roots in cultural, economic, and technological developments. For example, John Johnston in Information Multiplicity: American Fiction in the Age of Media Saturation argues persuasively that the postmodern American novel has been distinctively shaped by the glut of information that the Internet and contemporary communication media make available, a point also made by Fredric Jameson in his seminal study Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Yet for Coale, “that flow of information suggests the quantum flux, constantly in motion with islands of possible comprehension like the tracks and trails of ‘particles’ that are measured in individual experiments” (109). The importance of globalization, the complex economic structures emerging from late capitalism, the transformations the web has wrought—all these in Coale's analysis become subsets of quantum physics.Within the limits of his methodology, which are significant, Coale provides good readings of several postmodern authors, including Joan Didion, Tim O'Brien, Thomas Pynchon, Paul Auster, and Don DeLillo. Although many have discussed the fragmentation, nonlinear narratives, lack of coherent subjectivities, and indeterminacy of novels by these writers as postmodern constructions, for Coale they become manifestations of quantum theory (not surprisingly, since he sees postmodernism itself as a branch of the same). With chapters on the quantum flux, quantum style, and death as quantum dissolution, he combines good readings with inflated claims for them as manifestations of quantum theory. The exceptions to this quantum inflation are his discussions of DeLillo's novels. He mentions in the introduction that he found several articles on quantum theory and references of quantum phenomena in DeLillo's notebooks at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. These bear fruit in his readings of DeLillo's novels, especially his fine reading of The Body Artist and the section on DeLillo's Underworld, arguably the best interpretation in the book. This section alone almost justifies the price of admission.Were Coale to frame his book as a contribution to postmodern literary criticism, it would take its place among many other such books and articles as a well-written and interesting contribution that makes good observations about a number of important authors and their works. By insisting that all of this fits under quantum theory, he overreaches what the theory can justly claim and, in the process, dilutes the effectiveness of his book. Without a doubt, we need more informed criticism of the interactions between literature, culture, and science, but such work is more effective when it focuses on the specificities of scientific theories and their complex entanglements with cultural and technological practices. Lest it fall under Coale's quantum umbrella, I should add that I do not intend in this formulation a reference to quantum theory!
NOVEL A Forum on Fiction•Apr 24, 2015•0 citations