The full text of Alan Sokal's
article follows. The article tests the hypothesis that
"a leading North American
journal of cultural studies . . . would publish an article liberally salted
with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors'
ideological preconceptions."
The hypothesis was not disproved. One
is tempted to regard the whole affair as a sophomoric prank, were it not
for its frightening implications. Namely, that a silent tide of unreason
threatens to overwhelm our institutions of higher learning, and to dictate
from a pulpit of blind, intolerant, righteous ignorance what we may correctly
do, say and think.
Transgressing the Boundaries:
Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity
TURKISH
TRANSLATION/TÜRKCE CEVIRI
Alan D.
Sokal
Department
of Physics
New York
University
4 Washington
Place
New York,
NY 10003 USA
Internet:
SOKAL@NYU.EDU
Telephone:
(212) 998-7729
Fax: (212)
995-4016
November
28, 1994
revised
May 13, 1995
|
Biographical Information
The author is a Professor
of Physics at New York University. He has lectured widely in Europe and
Latin America, including at the Universit`a di Roma ``La Sapienza'' and,
during the Sandinista government, at the Universidad Nacional Aut'onoma
de Nicaragua. He is co-author with Roberto Fern'andez and Jürg Fröhlich
of Random Walks, Critical Phenomena, and Triviality in Quantum Field Theory
(Springer, 1992).
Transgressing disciplinary
boundaries ... [is] a subversive undertaking since it is likely to violate
the sanctuaries of accepted ways of perceiving. Among the most fortified
boundaries have been those between the natural sciences and the humanities.
— Valerie Greenberg, Transgressive
Readings (1990, 1)
The struggle for the transformation
of ideology into critical science ... proceeds on the foundation that the
critique of all presuppositions of science and ideology must be the only
absolute principle of science.
— Stanley Aronowitz, Science as
Power (1988b, 339)
There are many natural scientists, and
especially physicists, who continue to reject the notion that the disciplines
concerned with social and cultural criticism can have anything to contribute,
except perhaps peripherally, to their research. Still less are they receptive
to the idea that the very foundations of their worldview must be revised
or rebuilt in the light of such criticism. Rather, they cling to the dogma
imposed by the long post-Enlightenment hegemony over the Western intellectual
outlook, which can be summarized briefly as follows: that there exists
an external world, whose properties are independent of any individual human
being and indeed of humanity as a whole; that these properties are encoded
in ‘‘eternal’’ physical laws; and that human beings can obtain reliable,
albeit imperfect and tentative, knowledge of these laws by hewing to the
‘‘objective’’ procedures and epistemological strictures prescribed by the
(so-called) scientific method.
But deep conceptual shifts within
twentieth-century science have undermined this Cartesian-Newtonian metaphysics1;
revisionist studies in the history and philosophy of science have cast
further doubt on its credibility2;
and, most recently, feminist and poststructuralist critiques have demystified
the substantive content of mainstream Western scientific practice, revealing
the ideology of domination concealed behind the façade of ‘‘objectivity’’.3
It has thus become increasingly apparent that physical ‘‘reality’’, no
less than social ‘‘reality’’, is at bottom a social and linguistic construct;
that scientific ‘‘knowledge", far from being objective, reflects and encodes
the dominant ideologies and power relations of the culture that produced
it; that the truth claims of science are inherently theory-laden and self-referential;
and consequently, that the discourse of the scientific community, for all
its undeniable value, cannot assert a privileged epistemological status
with respect to counter-hegemonic narratives emanating from dissident or
marginalized communities. These themes can be traced, despite some differences
of emphasis, in Aronowitz's analysis of the cultural fabric that produced
quantum mechanics4;
in Ross' discussion of oppositional discourses in post-quantum science5;
in Irigaray's and Hayles' exegeses of gender encoding in fluid mechanics6;
and in Harding's comprehensive critique of the gender ideology underlying
the natural sciences in general and physics in particular.7
Here my aim is to carry these deep
analyses one step farther, by taking account of recent developments in
quantum gravity: the emerging branch of physics in which Heisenberg's quantum
mechanics and Einstein's general relativity are at once synthesized and
superseded. In quantum gravity, as we shall see, the space-time manifold
ceases to exist as an objective physical reality; geometry becomes relational
and contextual; and the foundational conceptual categories of prior science
— among them, existence itself — become problematized and relativized.
This conceptual revolution, I will argue, has profound implications for
the content of a future postmodern and liberatory science.
My approach will be as follows: First
I will review very briefly some of the philosophical and ideological issues
raised by quantum mechanics and by classical general relativity. Next I
will sketch the outlines of the emerging theory of quantum gravity, and
discuss some of the conceptual issues it raises. Finally, I will comment
on the cultural and political implications of these scientific developments.
It should be emphasized that this article is of necessity tentative and
preliminary; I do not pretend to answer all of the questions that I raise.
My aim is, rather, to draw the attention of readers to these important
developments in physical science, and to sketch as best I can their philosophical
and political implications. I have endeavored here to keep mathematics
to a bare minimum; but I have taken care to provide references where interested
readers can find all requisite details.
Quantum
Mechanics: Uncertainty, Complementarity, Discontinuity and Interconnectedness
It is not my intention to enter here
into the extensive debate on the conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics.8
Suffice it to say that anyone who has seriously studied the equations of
quantum mechanics will assent to Heisenberg's measured (pardon the pun)
summary of his celebrated uncertainty principle:
We can no longer speak of
the behaviour of the particle independently of the process of observation.
As a final consequence, the natural laws formulated mathematically in quantum
theory no longer deal with the elementary particles themselves but with
our knowledge of them. Nor is it any longer possible to ask whether or
not these particles exist in space and time objectively ...
When we speak of the picture of nature
in the exact science of our age, we do not mean a picture of nature so
much as a picture of our relationships with nature. ... Science
no longer confronts nature as an objective observer, but sees itself as
an actor in this interplay between man [sic] and nature. The scientific
method of analysing, explaining and classifying has become conscious of
its limitations, which arise out of the fact that by its intervention science
alters and refashions the object of investigation. In other words, method
and object can no longer be separated.910
Along the same lines, Niels Bohr wrote:
An independent reality in
the ordinary physical sense can ... neither be ascribed to the phenomena
nor to the agencies of observation.11
Stanley Aronowitz has convincingly traced
this worldview to the crisis of liberal hegemony in Central Europe in the
years prior and subsequent to World War I.1213
A second important aspect of quantum
mechanics is its principle of complementarity or dialecticism.
Is light a particle or a wave? Complementarity ‘‘is the realization that
particle and wave behavior are mutually exclusive, yet that both are necessary
for a complete description of all phenomena.’’14
More generally, notes Heisenberg,
the different intuitive
pictures which we use to describe atomic systems, although fully adequate
for given experiments, are nevertheless mutually exclusive. Thus, for instance,
the Bohr atom can be described as a small-scale planetary system, having
a central atomic nucleus about which the external electrons revolve. For
other experiments, however, it might be more convenient to imagine that
the atomic nucleus is surrounded by a system of stationary waves whose
frequency is characteristic of the radiation emanating from the atom. Finally,
we can consider the atom chemically. ... Each picture is legitimate when
used in the right place, but the different pictures are contradictory and
therefore we call them mutually complementary.15
And once again Bohr:
A complete elucidation of
one and the same object may require diverse points of view which defy a
unique description. Indeed, strictly speaking, the conscious analysis of
any concept stands in a relation of exclusion to its immediate application.16
This foreshadowing of postmodernist
epistemology is by no means coincidental. The profound connections between
complementarity and deconstruction have recently been elucidated by Froula17
and Honner18,
and, in great depth, by Plotnitsky.192021
A third aspect of quantum physics
is discontinuity or rupture: as Bohr explained,
[the] essence [of the quantum
theory] may be expressed in the so-called quantum postulate, which attributes
to any atomic process an essential discontinuity, or rather individuality,
completely foreign to the classical theories and symbolized by Planck's
quantum of action.22
A half-century later, the expression
‘‘quantum leap’’ has so entered our everyday vocabulary that we are likely
to use it without any consciousness of its origins in physical theory.
Finally, Bell's theorem23
and its recent generalizations24
show that an act of observation here and now can affect not only the object
being observed — as Heisenberg told us — but also an object arbitrarily
far away (say, on Andromeda galaxy). This phenomenon — which Einstein
termed ‘‘spooky’’ — imposes a radical reevaluation of the traditional mechanistic
concepts of space, object and causality25,
and suggests an alternative worldview in which the universe is characterized
by interconnectedness and (w)holism: what physicist David Bohm has called
‘‘implicate order’’.26
New Age interpretations of these insights from quantum physics have often
gone overboard in unwarranted speculation, but the general soundness of
the argument is undeniable.27
In Bohr's words, ‘‘Planck's discovery of the elementary quantum of action
... revealed a feature of wholeness inherent in atomic physics,
going far beyond the ancient idea of the limited divisibility of matter.’’28
Hermeneutics
of Classical General Relativity
In the Newtonian mechanistic worldview,
space and time are distinct and absolute.29
In Einstein's special theory of relativity (1905), the distinction between
space and time dissolves: there is only a new unity, four-dimensional space-time,
and the observer's perception of ‘‘space’’ and ‘‘time’’ depends on her
state of motion.30
In Hermann Minkowski's famous words (1908):
Henceforth space by itself,
and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only
a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.31
Nevertheless, the underlying geometry
of Minkowskian space-time remains absolute.32
It is in Einstein's general theory
of relativity (1915) that the radical conceptual break occurs: the space-time
geometry becomes contingent and dynamical, encoding in itself the gravitational
field. Mathematically, Einstein breaks with the tradition dating back to
Euclid (and which is inflicted on high-school students even today!), and
employs instead the non-Euclidean geometry developed by Riemann. Einstein's
equations are highly nonlinear, which is why traditionally-trained mathematicians
find them so difficult to solve.33
Newton's gravitational theory corresponds to the crude (and conceptually
misleading) truncation of Einstein's equations in which the nonlinearity
is simply ignored. Einstein's general relativity therefore subsumes all
the putative successes of Newton's theory, while going beyond Newton to
predict radically new phenomena that arise directly from the nonlinearity:
the bending of starlight by the sun, the precession of the perihelion of
Mercury, and the gravitational collapse of stars into black holes.
General relativity is so weird that
some of its consequences — deduced by impeccable mathematics, and increasingly
confirmed by astrophysical observation — read like science fiction. Black
holes are by now well known, and wormholes are beginning to make the charts.
Perhaps less familiar is Gödel's construction of an Einstein space-time
admitting closed timelike curves: that is, a universe in which it is possible
to travel into one's own past!34
Thus, general relativity forces upon
us radically new and counterintuitive notions of space, time and causality35363738;
so it is not surprising that it has had a profound impact not only on the
natural sciences but also on philosophy, literary criticism, and the human
sciences. For example, in a celebrated symposium three decades ago on Les
Langages Critiques et les Sciences de l'Homme, Jean Hyppolite raised
an incisive question about Jacques Derrida's theory of structure and sign
in scientific discourse:
When I take, for example,
the structure of certain algebraic constructions [ensembles], where is
the center? Is the center the knowledge of general rules which, after a
fashion, allow us to understand the interplay of the elements? Or is the
center certain elements which enjoy a particular privilege within the ensemble?
... With Einstein, for example, we see the end of a kind of privilege of
empiric evidence. And in that connection we see a constant appear, a constant
which is a combination of space-time, which does not belong to any of the
experimenters who live the experience, but which, in a way, dominates the
whole construct; and this notion of the constant — is this the center?39
Derrida's perceptive reply went to the
heart of classical general relativity:
The Einsteinian constant
is not a constant, is not a center. It is the very concept of variability
— it is, finally, the concept of the game. In other words, it is not the
concept of something — of a center starting from which an observer
could master the field — but the very concept of the game ...40
In mathematical terms, Derrida's observation
relates to the invariance of the Einstein field equation
under nonlinear space-time diffeomorphisms (self-mappings of the space-time
manifold which are infinitely differentiable but not necessarily analytic).
The key point is that this invariance group ‘‘acts transitively’’: this
means that any space-time point, if it exists at all, can be transformed
into any other. In this way the infinite-dimensional invariance group erodes
the distinction between observer and observed; the
of Euclid and the G of Newton, formerly thought to be constant and
universal, are now perceived in their ineluctable historicity; and the
putative observer becomes fatally de-centered, disconnected from any epistemic
link to a space-time point that can no longer be defined by geometry alone.
Quantum
Gravity: String, Weave or Morphogenetic Field?
However, this interpretation, while
adequate within classical general relativity, becomes incomplete within
the emerging postmodern view of quantum gravity. When even the gravitational
field — geometry incarnate — becomes a non-commuting (and hence nonlinear)
operator, how can the classical interpretation of
as a geometric entity be sustained? Now not only the observer, but the
very concept of geometry, becomes relational and contextual.
The synthesis of quantum theory and
general relativity is thus the central unsolved problem of theoretical
physics41;
no one today can predict with confidence what will be the language and
ontology, much less the content, of this synthesis, when and if it comes.
It is, nevertheless, useful to examine historically the metaphors and imagery
that theoretical physicists have employed in their attempts to understand
quantum gravity.
The earliest attempts — dating back
to the early 1960's — to visualize geometry on the Planck scale (about
centimeters) portrayed it as ‘‘space-time foam’’: bubbles of space-time
curvature, sharing a complex and ever-changing topology of interconnections.42
But physicists were unable to carry this approach farther, perhaps due
to the inadequate development at that time of topology and manifold theory
(see below).
In the 1970's physicists tried an
even more conventional approach: simplify the Einstein equations by pretending
that they are almost linear, and then apply the standard methods
of quantum field theory to the thus-oversimplified equations. But this
method, too, failed: it turned out that Einstein's general relativity is,
in technical language, ‘‘perturbatively nonrenormalizable’’.43
This means that the strong nonlinearities of Einstein's general relativity
are intrinsic to the theory; any attempt to pretend that the nonlinearities
are weak is simply self-contradictory. (This is not surprising: the almost-linear
approach destroys the most characteristic features of general relativity,
such as black holes.)
In the 1980's a very different approach,
known as string theory, became popular: here the fundamental constituents
of matter are not point-like particles but rather tiny (Planck-scale) closed
and open strings.44
In this theory, the space-time manifold does not exist as an objective
physical reality; rather, space-time is a derived concept, an approximation
valid only on large length scales (where ‘‘large’’ means ‘‘much larger
than
centimeters’’!). For a while many enthusiasts of string theory thought
they were closing in on a Theory of Everything — modesty is not one of
their virtues — and some still think so. But the mathematical difficulties
in string theory are formidable, and it is far from clear that they will
be resolved any time soon.
More recently, a small group of physicists
has returned to the full nonlinearities of Einstein's general relativity,
and — using a new mathematical symbolism invented by Abhay Ashtekar — they
have attempted to visualize the structure of the corresponding quantum
theory.45
The picture they obtain is intriguing: As in string theory, the space-time
manifold is only an approximation valid at large distances, not an objective
reality. At small (Planck-scale) distances, the geometry of space-time
is a weave: a complex interconnection of threads.
Finally, an exciting proposal has
been taking shape over the past few years in the hands of an interdisciplinary
collaboration of mathematicians, astrophysicists and biologists: this is
the theory of the morphogenetic field.46
Since the mid-1980's evidence has been accumulating that this field, first
conceptualized by developmental biologists47,
is in fact closely linked to the quantum gravitational field48:
(a) it pervades all space; (b) it interacts with all matter and energy,
irrespective of whether or not that matter/energy is magnetically charged;
and, most significantly, (c) it is what is known mathematically as a ‘‘symmetric
second-rank tensor’’. All three properties are characteristic of gravity;
and it was proven some years ago that the only self-consistent nonlinear
theory of a symmetric second-rank tensor field is, at least at low energies,
precisely Einstein's general relativity.49
Thus, if the evidence for (a), (b) and (c) holds up, we can infer that
the morphogenetic field is the quantum counterpart of Einstein's gravitational
field. Until recently this theory has been ignored or even scorned by the
high-energy-physics establishment, who have traditionally resented the
encroachment of biologists (not to mention humanists) on their ‘‘turf’’.50
However, some theoretical physicists have recently begun to give this theory
a second look, and there are good prospects for progress in the near future.51
It is still too soon to say whether
string theory, the space-time weave or morphogenetic fields will be confirmed
in the laboratory: the experiments are not easy to perform. But it is intriguing
that all three theories have similar conceptual characteristics: strong
nonlinearity, subjective space-time, inexorable flux, and a stress on the
topology of interconnectedness.
Differential
Topology and Homology
Unbeknownst to most outsiders, theoretical
physics underwent a significant transformation — albeit not yet a true
Kuhnian paradigm shift — in the 1970's and 80's: the traditional tools
of mathematical physics (real and complex analysis), which deal with the
space-time manifold only locally, were supplemented by topological approaches
(more precisely, methods from differential topology52)
that account for the global (holistic) structure of the universe. This
trend was seen in the analysis of anomalies in gauge theories53;
in the theory of vortex-mediated phase transitions54;
and in string and superstring theories.55
Numerous books and review articles on ‘‘topology for physicists’’ were
published during these years.56
At about the same time, in the social
and psychological sciences Jacques Lacan pointed out the key role played
by differential topology:
This diagram [the Möbius
strip] can be considered the basis of a sort of essential inscription at
the origin, in the knot which constitutes the subject. This goes much further
than you may think at first, because you can search for the sort of surface
able to receive such inscriptions. You can perhaps see that the sphere,
that old symbol for totality, is unsuitable. A torus, a Klein bottle, a
cross-cut surface, are able to receive such a cut. And this diversity is
very important as it explains many things about the structure of mental
disease. If one can symbolize the subject by this fundamental cut, in the
same way one can show that a cut on a torus corresponds to the neurotic
subject, and on a cross-cut surface to another sort of mental disease.5758
As Althusser rightly commented, ‘‘Lacan
finally gives Freud's thinking the scientific concepts that it requires’’.59
More recently, Lacan's topologie du sujet has been applied fruitfully
to cinema criticism60
and to the psychoanalysis of AIDS.61
In mathematical terms, Lacan is here pointing out that the first homology
group62
of the sphere is trivial, while those of the other surfaces are profound;
and this homology is linked with the connectedness or disconnectedness
of the surface after one or more cuts.63
Furthermore, as Lacan suspected, there is an intimate connection between
the external structure of the physical world and its inner psychological
representation qua knot theory: this hypothesis has recently been
confirmed by Witten's derivation of knot invariants (in particular the
Jones polynomial64)
from three-dimensional Chern-Simons quantum field theory.65
Analogous topological structures
arise in quantum gravity, but inasmuch as the manifolds involved are multidimensional
rather than two-dimensional, higher homology groups play a role as well.
These multidimensional manifolds are no longer amenable to visualization
in conventional three-dimensional Cartesian space: for example, the projective
space
, which arises from the ordinary 3-sphere by identification of antipodes,
would require a Euclidean embedding space of dimension at least 5. 66
Nevertheless, the higher homology groups can be perceived, at least approximately,
via a suitable multidimensional (nonlinear) logic.6768
Manifold
Theory: (W)holes and Boundaries
Luce Irigaray, in her famous article
‘‘Is the Subject of Science Sexed?’’, pointed out that
the mathematical sciences,
in the theory of wholes [théorie des ensembles], concern themselves
with closed and open spaces ... They concern themselves very little with
the question of the partially open, with wholes that are not clearly delineated
[ensembles flous], with any analysis of the problem of borders [bords]
...69
In 1982, when Irigaray's essay first
appeared, this was an incisive criticism: differential topology has traditionally
privileged the study of what are known technically as ‘‘manifolds without
boundary’’. However, in the past decade, under the impetus of the feminist
critique, some mathematicians have given renewed attention to the theory
of ‘‘manifolds with boundary’’ [Fr. variétés à bord].70
Perhaps not coincidentally, it is precisely these manifolds that arise
in the new physics of conformal field theory, superstring theory and quantum
gravity.
In string theory, the quantum-mechanical
amplitude for the interaction of n closed or open strings is represented
by a functional integral (basically, a sum) over fields living on a two-dimensional
manifold with boundary.71In
quantum gravity, we may expect that a similar representation will hold,
except that the two-dimensional manifold with boundary will be replaced
by a multidimensional one. Unfortunately, multidimensionality goes against
the grain of conventional linear mathematical thought, and despite a recent
broadening of attitudes (notably associated with the study of multidimensional
nonlinear phenomena in chaos theory), the theory of multidimensional manifolds
with boundary remains somewhat underdeveloped. Nevertheless, physicists'
work on the functional-integral approach to quantum gravity continues apace72,
and this work is likely to stimulate the attention of mathematicians.73
As Irigaray anticipated, an important
question in all of these theories is: Can the boundary be transgressed
(crossed), and if so, what happens then? Technically this is known as the
problem of ‘‘boundary conditions’’. At a purely mathematical level, the
most salient aspect of boundary conditions is the great diversity of possibilities:
for example, ‘‘free b.c.’’ (no obstacle to crossing), ‘‘reflecting b.c.’’
(specular reflection as in a mirror), ‘‘periodic b.c.’’ (re-entrance in
another part of the manifold), and ‘‘antiperiodic b.c.’’ (re-entrance with
twist). The question posed by physicists is: Of all these conceivable boundary
conditions, which ones actually occur in the representation of quantum
gravity? Or perhaps, do all of them occur simultaneously and on
an equal footing, as suggested by the complementarity principle?74
At this point my summary of developments
in physics must stop, for the simple reason that the answers to these questions
— if indeed they have univocal answers — are not yet known. In the remainder
of this essay, I propose to take as my starting point those features of
the theory of quantum gravity which are relatively well established
(at least by the standards of conventional science), and attempt to draw
out their philosophical and political implications.
Transgressing
the Boundaries: Towards a Liberatory Science
Over the past two decades there has
been extensive discussion among critical theorists with regard to the characteristics
of modernist versus postmodernist culture; and in recent years these dialogues
have begun to devote detailed attention to the specific problems posed
by the natural sciences.75
In particular, Madsen and Madsen have recently given a very clear summary
of the characteristics of modernist versus postmodernist science. They
posit two criteria for a postmodern science:
A simple criterion for science
to qualify as postmodern is that it be free from any dependence on the
concept of objective truth. By this criterion, for example, the complementarity
interpretation of quantum physics due to Niels Bohr and the Copenhagen
school is seen as postmodernist.76
Clearly, quantum gravity is in this
respect an archetypal postmodernist science. Secondly,
The other concept which
can be taken as being fundamental to postmodern science is that of essentiality.
Postmodern scientific theories are constructed from those theoretical elements
which are essential for the consistency and utility of the theory.77
Thus, quantities or objects which are
in principle unobservable — such as space-time points, exact particle positions,
or quarks and gluons — ought not to be introduced into the theory.78
While much of modern physics is excluded by this criterion, quantum gravity
again qualifies: in the passage from classical general relativity to the
quantized theory, space-time points (and indeed the space-time manifold
itself) have disappeared from the theory.
However, these criteria, admirable
as they are, are insufficient for a liberatory postmodern science:
they liberate human beings from the tyranny of ‘‘absolute truth’’ and ‘‘objective
reality’’, but not necessarily from the tyranny of other human beings.
In Andrew Ross' words, we need a science ‘‘that will be publicly answerable
and of some service to progressive interests.’’79
From a feminist standpoint, Kelly Oliver makes a similar argument:
... in order to be revolutionary,
feminist theory cannot claim to describe what exists, or, ‘‘natural facts.’’
Rather, feminist theories should be political tools, strategies for overcoming
oppression in specific concrete situations. The goal, then, of feminist
theory, should be to develop strategic theories — not true theories,
not false theories, but strategic theories.80
How, then, is this to be done?
In what follows, I would like to
discuss the outlines of a liberatory postmodern science on two levels:
first, with regard to general themes and attitudes; and second, with regard
to political goals and strategies.
One characteristic of the emerging
postmodern science is its stress on nonlinearity and discontinuity: this
is evident, for example, in chaos theory and the theory of phase transitions
as well as in quantum gravity.81
At the same time, feminist thinkers have pointed out the need for an adequate
analysis of fluidity, in particular turbulent fluidity.82
These two themes are not as contradictory as it might at first appear:
turbulence connects with strong nonlinearity, and smoothness/fluidity is
sometimes associated with discontinuity (e.g. in catastrophe theory83);
so a synthesis is by no means out of the question.
Secondly, the postmodern sciences
deconstruct and transcend the Cartesian metaphysical distinctions between
humankind and Nature, observer and observed, Subject and Object. Already
quantum mechanics, earlier in this century, shattered the ingenuous Newtonian
faith in an objective, pre-linguistic world of material objects ‘‘out there’’;
no longer could we ask, as Heisenberg put it, whether ‘‘particles exist
in space and time objectively’’. But Heisenberg's formulation still presupposes
the objective existence of space and time as the neutral, unproblematic
arena in which quantized particle-waves interact (albeit indeterministically);
and it is precisely this would-be arena that quantum gravity problematizes.
Just as quantum mechanics informs us that the position and momentum of
a particle are brought into being only by the act of observation, so quantum
gravity informs us that space and time themselves are contextual, their
meaning defined only relative to the mode of observation.84
Thirdly, the postmodern sciences
overthrow the static ontological categories and hierarchies characteristic
of modernist science. In place of atomism and reductionism, the new sciences
stress the dynamic web of relationships between the whole and the part;
in place of fixed individual essences (e.g. Newtonian particles), they
conceptualize interactions and flows (e.g. quantum fields). Intriguingly,
these homologous features arise in numerous seemingly disparate areas of
science, from quantum gravity to chaos theory to the biophysics of self-organizing
systems. In this way, the postmodern sciences appear to be converging on
a new epistemological paradigm, one that may be termed an ecological
perspective, broadly understood as ‘‘recogniz[ing] the fundamental interdependence
of all phenomena and the embeddedness of individuals and societies in the
cyclical patterns of nature.’’85
A fourth aspect of postmodern science
is its self-conscious stress on symbolism and representation. As Robert
Markley points out, the postmodern sciences are increasingly transgressing
disciplinary boundaries, taking on characteristics that had heretofore
been the province of the humanities:
Quantum physics, hadron
bootstrap theory, complex number theory, and chaos theory share the basic
assumption that reality cannot be described in linear terms, that nonlinear
— and unsolvable — equations are the only means possible to describe a
complex, chaotic, and non-deterministic reality. These postmodern theories
are — significantly — all metacritical in the sense that they foreground
themselves as metaphors rather than as ‘‘accurate’’ descriptions of reality.
In terms that are more familiar to literary theorists than to theoretical
physicists, we might say that these attempts by scientists to develop new
strategies of description represent notes towards a theory of theories,
of how representation — mathematical, experimental, and verbal — is inherently
complex and problematizing, not a solution but part of the semiotics of
investigating the universe.8687
From a different starting point, Aronowitz
likewise suggests that a liberatory science may arise from interdisciplinary
sharing of epistemologies:
... natural objects are
also socially constructed. It is not a question of whether these natural
objects, or, to be more precise, the objects of natural scientific knowledge,
exist independently of the act of knowing. This question is answered by
the assumption of ‘‘real’’ time as opposed to the presupposition, common
among neo-Kantians, that time always has a referent, that temporality is
therefore a relative, not an unconditioned, category. Surely, the earth
evolved long before life on earth. The question is whether objects of natural
scientific knowledge are constituted outside the social field. If this
is possible, we can assume that science or art may develop procedures that
effectively neutralize the effects emanating from the means by which we
produce knowledge/art. Performance art may be such an attempt.88
Finally, postmodern science provides
a powerful refutation of the authoritarianism and elitism inherent in traditional
science, as well as an empirical basis for a democratic approach to scientific
work. For, as Bohr noted, ‘‘a complete elucidation of one and the same
object may require diverse points of view which defy a unique description’’
— this is quite simply a fact about the world, much as the self-proclaimed
empiricists of modernist science might prefer to deny it. In such a situation,
how can a self-perpetuating secular priesthood of credentialed ‘‘scientists’’
purport to maintain a monopoly on the production of scientific knowledge?
(Let me emphasize that I am in no way opposed to specialized scientific
training; I object only when an elite caste seeks to impose its canon of
‘‘high science’’, with the aim of excluding a priori alternative
forms of scientific production by non-members.89)
The content and methodology of postmodern
science thus provide powerful intellectual support for the progressive
political project, understood in its broadest sense: the transgressing
of boundaries, the breaking down of barriers, the radical democratization
of all aspects of social, economic, political and cultural life.90
Conversely, one part of this project must involve the construction of a
new and truly progressive science that can serve the needs of such a democratized
society-to-be. As Markley observes, there seem to be two more-or-less mutually
exclusive choices available to the progressive community:
On the one hand, politically
progressive scientists can try to recuperate existing practices for moral
values they uphold, arguing that their right-wing enemies are defacing
nature and that they, the counter-movement, have access to the truth. [But]
the state of the biosphere — air pollution, water pollution, disappearing
rain forests, thousands of species on the verge of extinction, large areas
of land burdened far beyond their carrying capacity, nuclear power plants,
nuclear weapons, clearcuts where there used to be forests, starvation,
malnutrition, disappearing wetlands, nonexistent grass lands, and a rash
of environmentally caused diseases — suggests that the realist dream of
scientific progress, of recapturing rather than revolutionizing existing
methodologies and technologies, is, at worst, irrelevant to a political
struggle that seeks something more than a reenactment of state socialism.91
The alternative is a profound reconception
of science as well as politics:
[T]he dialogical move towards
redefining systems, of seeing the world not only as an ecological whole
but as a set of competing systems — a world held together by the tensions
among various natural and human interests — offers the possibility of redefining
what science is and what it does, of restructuring deterministic schemes
of scientific education in favor of ongoing dialogues about how we intervene
in our environment.92
It goes without saying that postmodernist
science unequivocally favors the latter, deeper approach.
In addition to redefining the content
of science, it is imperative to restructure and redefine the institutional
loci in which scientific labor takes place — universities, government labs,
and corporations — and reframe the reward system that pushes scientists
to become, often against their own better instincts, the hired guns of
capitalists and the military. As Aronowitz has noted, ‘‘One third of the
11,000 physics graduate students in the United States are in the single
subfield of solid state physics, and all of them will be able to get jobs
in that subfield.’’93
By contrast, there are few jobs available in either quantum gravity or
environmental physics.
But all this is only a first step:
the fundamental goal of any emancipatory movement must be to demystify
and democratize the production of scientific knowledge, to break down the
artificial barriers that separate ‘‘scientists’’ from ‘‘the public’’. Realistically,
this task must start with the younger generation, through a profound reform
of the educational system.94
The teaching of science and mathematics must be purged of its authoritarian
and elitist characteristics95,
and the content of these subjects enriched by incorporating the insights
of the feminist96,
queer97,
multiculturalist98
and ecological99
critiques.
Finally, the content of any science
is profoundly constrained by the language within which its discourses are
formulated; and mainstream Western physical science has, since Galileo,
been formulated in the language of mathematics.100101
But whose mathematics? The question is a fundamental one, for, as
Aronowitz has observed, ‘‘neither logic nor mathematics escapes the `contamination'
of the social.’’102
And as feminist thinkers have repeatedly pointed out, in the present culture
this contamination is overwhelmingly capitalist, patriarchal and militaristic:
‘‘mathematics is portrayed as a woman whose nature desires to be the conquered
Other.’’103104
Thus, a liberatory science cannot be complete without a profound revision
of the canon of mathematics.105
As yet no such emancipatory mathematics exists, and we can only speculate
upon its eventual content. We can see hints of it in the multidimensional
and nonlinear logic of fuzzy systems theory106;
but this approach is still heavily marked by its origins in the crisis
of late-capitalist production relations.107
Catastrophe theory108,
with its dialectical emphases on smoothness/discontinuity and metamorphosis/unfolding,
will indubitably play a major role in the future mathematics; but much
theoretical work remains to be done before this approach can become a concrete
tool of progressive political praxis.109
Finally, chaos theory — which provides our deepest insights into the ubiquitous
yet mysterious phenomenon of nonlinearity — will be central to all future
mathematics. And yet, these images of the future mathematics must remain
but the haziest glimmer: for, alongside these three young branches in the
tree of science, there will arise new trunks and branches — entire new
theoretical frameworks — of which we, with our present ideological blinders,
cannot yet even conceive.
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Giacomo Caracciolo,
Lucía Fernández-Santoro, Lia Gutiérrez and Elizabeth Meiklejohn for enjoyable
discussions which have contributed greatly to this article. Needless to
say, these people should not be assumed to be in total agreement with the
scientific and political views expressed here, nor are they responsible
for any errors or obscurities which may inadvertently remain.
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Footnotes
1...metaphysics
Heisenberg (1958), Bohr (1963).
2...credibility
Kuhn (1970), Feyerabend (1975),
Latour (1987), Aronowitz (1988b), Bloor (1991).
3...‘‘objectivity’’.
Merchant (1980), Keller (1985),
Harding (1986,1991), Haraway (1989,1991), Best (1991).
4...mechanics
Aronowitz (1988b, especially chaps.
9 and 12).
5...science
Ross (1991, introduction and chap.
1).
6...mechanics
Irigaray (1985), Hayles (1992).
7...particular.
Harding (1986, especially chaps.
2 and 10); Harding (1991, especially chap. 4).
8...mechanics.
For a sampling of views, see Jammer
(1974), Bell (1987), Albert (1992), Dürr, Goldstein and Zanghí (1992),
Weinberg (1992, chap. IV), Coleman (1993), diary Maudlin (1994), Bricmont
(1994).
9...separated.
Heisenberg (1958, 15, 28-29), emphasis
in Heisenberg's original. See also Overstreet (1980), Craige (1982), Hayles
(1984), Greenberg (1990), Booker (1990) and Porter (1990) for examples
of cross-fertilization of ideas between relativistic quantum theory and
literary criticism.
10...separated.
Unfortunately, Heisenberg's uncertainty
principle has frequently been misinterpreted by amateur philosophers. As
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1994, 129-130) lucidly point out,
in quantum physics, Heisenberg's
demon does not express the impossibility of measuring both the speed and
the position of a particle on the grounds of a subjective interference
of the measure with the measured, but it measures exactly an objective
state of affairs that leaves the respective position of two of its particles
outside of the field of its actualization, the number of independent variables
being reduced and the values of the coordinates having the same probability.
...Perspectivism, or scientific relativism, is never relative to a subject:
it constitutes not a relativity of truth but, on the contrary, a truth
of the relative, that is to say, of variables whose cases it orders according
to the values it extracts from them in its system of coordinates ...
11...observation.
Bohr (1928), cited in Pais (1991, 314).
12...World War I.
Aronowitz (1988b, 251-256).
13...World War I.
See also Porush (1989) for a fascinating
account of how a second group of scientists and engineers — cyberneticists
— contrived, with considerable success, to subvert the most revolutionary
implications of quantum physics. The main limitation of Porush's critique
is that it remains solely on a cultural and philosophical plane; his conclusions
would be immeasurably strengthened by an analysis of economic and political
factors. (For example, Porush fails to mention that engineer-cyberneticist
Claude Shannon worked for the then-telephone monopoly AT&T.) A careful
analysis would show, I think, that the victory of cybernetics over quantum
physics in the 1940's and 50's can be explained in large part by the centrality
of cybernetics to the ongoing capitalist drive for automation of industrial
production, compared to the marginal industrial relevance of quantum mechanics.
14...phenomena.’’
Pais (1991, 23). Aronowitz (1981,
28) has noted that wave-particle duality renders the ‘‘will to totality
in modern science’’ severely problematic:
The differences within physics
between wave and particle theories of matter, the indeterminacy principle
discovered by Heisenberg, Einstein's relativity theory, all are accommodations
to the impossibility of arriving at a unified field theory, one in which
the ‘‘anomaly’’ of difference for a theory which posits identity may be
resolved without challenging the presuppositions of science itself.
For further development of these ideas,
see Aronowitz (1988a, 524-525, 533).
15...complementary.
Heisenberg (1958, 40-41).
16...application.
Bohr (1934), cited in Jammer (1974,
102). Bohr's analysis of the complementarity principle also led him to
a social outlook which was, for its time and place, notably progressive.
Consider the following excerpt from a 1938 lecture (Bohr 1958, 30):
I may perhaps here remind
you of the extent to which in certain societies the roles of men and women
are reversed, not only regarding domestic and social duties but also regarding
behaviour and mentality. Even if many of us, in such a situation, might
perhaps at first shrink from admitting the possibility that it is entirely
a caprice of fate that the people concerned have their specific culture
and not ours, and we not theirs instead of our own, it is clear that even
the slightest suspicion in this respect implies a betrayal of the national
complacency inherent in any human culture resting in itself.
17...Froula
Froula (1985).
18...Honner
Honner (1994).
19...Plotnitsky.
Plotnitsky (1994). This impressive
work also explains the intimate connections with Gödel's proof of the incompleteness
of formal systems and with Skolem's construction of nonstandard models
of arithmetic, as well as with Bataille's general economy. For further
discussion of Bataille's physics, see Hochroth (1995).
20...Plotnitsky.
Numerous other examples could
be adduced. For instance, Barbara Johnson (1989, 12) makes no specific
reference to quantum physics; but her description of deconstruction is
an eerily exact summary of the complementarity principle:
Instead of a simple ‘‘either/or’’
structure, deconstruction attempts to elaborate a discourse that says neither
‘‘either/or’’, nor ‘‘both/and’’ nor even ‘‘neither/nor’’, while
at the same time not totally abandoning these logics either.
See also McCarthy (1992) for a thought-provoking
analysis that raises disturbing questions about the ‘‘complicity’’ between
(nonrelativistic) quantum physics and deconstruction.
21...Plotnitsky.
Permit me in this regard a personal
recollection: Fifteen years ago, when I was a graduate student, my research
in relativistic quantum field theory led me to an approach which I called
‘‘de[con]structive quantum field theory’’ (Sokal 1982). Of course, at that
time I was completely ignorant of Jacques Derrida's work on deconstruction
in philosophy and literary theory. In retrospect, however, there is a striking
affinity: my work can be read as an exploration of how the orthodox discourse
(e.g. Itzykson and Zuber 1980) on scalar quantum field theory in four-dimensional
space-time (in technical terms, ‘‘renormalized perturbation theory’’ for
the p 4/4 theory) can be seen to assert its own unreliability and thereby
to undermine its own affirmations. Since then, my work has shifted to other
questions, mostly connected with phase transitions; but subtle homologies
between the two fields can be discerned, notably the theme of discontinuity
(see Notes 22 and 81
below). For further examples of deconstruction in quantum field theory,
see Merz and Knorr Cetina (1994).
22...action.
Bohr
(1928), cited in Jammer (1974, 90).
23...theorem
Bell
(1987, especially chaps. 10 and 16). See also Maudlin (1994, chap. 1) for
a clear account presupposing no specialized knowledge beyond high-school
algebra.
24...generalizations
Greenberger
et al. (1989,1990), Mermin (1990,1993).
25...causality
Aronowitz
(1988b, 331) has made a provocative observation concerning nonlinear causality
in quantum mechanics and its relation to the social construction of time:
Linear causality assumes
that the relation of cause and effect can be expressed as a function of
temporal succession. Owing to recent developments in quantum mechanics,
we can postulate that it is possible to know the effects of absent causes;
that is, speaking metaphorically, effects may anticipate causes so that
our perception of them may precede the physical occurrence of a ‘‘cause.’’
The hypothesis that challenges our conventional conception of linear time
and causality and that asserts the possibility of time's reversal also
raises the question of the degree to which the concept of ‘‘time's arrow’’
is inherent in all scientific theory. If these experiments are successful,
the conclusions about the way time as ‘‘clock-time’’ has been constituted
historically will be open to question. We will have ‘‘proved’’ by means
of experiment what has long been suspected by philosophers, literary and
social critics: that time is, in part, a conventional construction, its
segmentation into hours and minutes a product of the need for industrial
discipline, for rational organization of social labor in the early bourgeois
epoch.
The theoretical analyses of Greenberger
et al. (1989,1990) and Mermin (1990,1993) provide a striking example
of this phenomenon; see Maudlin (1994) for a detailed analysis of the implications
for concepts of causality and temporality. An experimental test, extending
the work of Aspect et al. (1982), will likely be forthcoming within
the next few years.
26...order’’.
Bohm (1980). The intimate relations
between quantum mechanics and the mind-body problem are discussed in Goldstein
(1983, chaps. 7 and 8).
27...undeniable.
Among the voluminous literature,
the book by Capra (1975) can be recommended for its scientific accuracy
and its accessibility to non-specialists. In addition, the book by Sheldrake
(1981), while occasionally speculative, is in general sound. For a sympathetic
but critical analysis of New Age theories, see Ross (1991, chap. 1). For
a critique of Capra's work from a Third World perspective, see Alvares
(1992, chap. 6).
28...matter.’’
Bohr (1963, 2), emphasis in Bohr's
original.
29...absolute.
Newtonian atomism treats particles
as hyperseparated in space and time, backgrounding their interconnectedness
(Plumwood 1993a, 125); indeed, ‘‘the only `force' allowed within the mechanistic
framework is that of kinetic energy — the energy of motion by contact —
all other purported forces, including action at a distance, being regarded
as occult’’ (Mathews 1991, 17). For critical analyses of the Newtonian
mechanistic worldview, see Weil (1968, especially chap. 1), Merchant (1980),
Berman (1981), Keller (1985, chaps. 2 and 3), Mathews (1991, chap. 1) and
Plumwood (1993a, chap. 5).
30...motion.
According to the traditional textbook
account, special relativity is concerned with the coordinate transformations
relating two frames of reference in uniform relative motion. But
this is a misleading oversimplification, as Latour (1988) has pointed out:
How can one decide whether
an observation made in a train about the behaviour of a falling stone can
be made to coincide with the observation made of the same falling stone
from the embankment? If there are only one, or even two, frames
of reference, no solution can be found since the man in the train claims
he observes a straight line and the man on the embankment a parabola. ...
Einstein's solution is to consider
three actors: one in the train, one on the embankment and a third
one, the author [enunciator] or one of its representants, who tries to
superimpose the coded observations sent back by the two others. ...
[W]ithout the enunciator's position
(hidden in Einstein's account), and without the notion of centres of calculation,
Einstein's own technical argument is ununderstandable ... [pp. 10-11 and
35, emphasis in original]
In the end, as Latour wittily but accurately
observes, special relativity boils down to the proposition that
more frames of reference
with less privilege can be accessed, reduced, accumulated and combined,
observers can be delegated to a few more places in the infinitely large
(the cosmos) and the infinitely small (electrons), and the readings they
send will be understandable. His [Einstein's] book could well be titled:
`New Instructions for Bringing Back Long-Distance Scientific Travellers'.
[pp. 22-23]
Latour's critical analysis of Einstein's
logic provides an eminently accessible introduction to special relativity
for non-scientists.
31...reality.
Minkowski (1908), translated in Lorentz
et al. (1952, 75).
32...absolute.
It goes without saying that special
relativity proposes new concepts not only of space and time but also of
mechanics. In special relativity, as Virilio (1991, 136) has noted, ‘‘the
dromospheric space, space-speed, is physically described by what is called
the `logistic equation,' the result of the product of the mass displaced
by the speed of its displacement, MxV.’’ This radical alteration of the
Newtonian formula has profound consequences, particularly in the quantum
theory; see Lorentz et al. (1952) and Weinberg (1992) for further
discussion.
33...solve.
Steven Best (1991, 225) has put
his finger on the crux of the difficulty, which is that ‘‘unlike the linear
equations used in Newtonian and even quantum mechanics, non-linear equations
do [not] have the simple additive property whereby chains of solutions
can be constructed out of simple, independent parts’’. For this reason,
the strategies of atomization, reductionism and context-stripping that
underlie the Newtonian scientific methodology simply do not work in general
relativity.
34...past!
Gödel (1949). For a summary of
recent work in this area, see 't Hooft (1993).
35...causality
These new notions of space, time
and causality are in part foreshadowed already in special relativity.
Thus, Alexander Argyros (1991, 137) has noted that
in a universe dominated
by photons, gravitons, and neutrinos, that is, in the very early universe,
the theory of special relativity suggests that any distinction between
before and after is impossible. For a particle traveling at the speed of
light, or one traversing a distance that is in the order of the Planck
length, all events are simultaneous.
However, I cannot agree with Argyros'
conclusion that Derridean deconstruction is therefore inapplicable to the
hermeneutics of early-universe cosmology: Argyros' argument to this effect
is based on an impermissibly totalizing use of special relativity (in technical
terms, ‘‘light-cone coordinates’’) in a context where general relativity
is inescapable. (For a similar but less innocent error, see Note 40
below.)
36...causality
Jean-François Lyotard (1989, 5-6)
has pointed out that not only general relativity, but also modern elementary-particle
physics, imposes new notions of time:
In contemporary physics
and astrophysics ...a particle has a sort of elementary memory and consequently
a temporal filter. This is why contemporary physicists tend to think that
time emanates from matter itself, and that it is not an entity outside
or inside the universe whose function it would be to gather all different
times into universal history. It is only in certain regions that such —
only partial — syntheses could be detected. There would on this view be
areas of determinism where complexity is increasing.
Furthermore, Michel Serres (1992, 89-91)
has noted that chaos theory (Gleick 1987) and percolation theory (Stauffer
1985) have contested the traditional linear concept of time:
Time does not always flow
along a line ...or a plane, but along an extraordinarily complex manifold,
as if it showed stopping points, ruptures, sinks [puits], funnels
of overwhelming acceleration [cheminées d'accélération foudroyante],
rips, lacunae, all sown randomly ...
Time flows in a turbulent and chaotic
manner; it percolates. [Translation mine. Note that in the theory of dynamical
systems, ‘‘puits’’ is a technical term meaning ‘‘sink’’, i.e. the
opposite of ‘‘source’’.]
These multiple insights into the nature
of time, provided by different branches of physics, are a further illustration
of the complementarity principle.
37...causality
General relativity can arguably
be read as corroborating the Nietzschean deconstruction of causality (see
e.g. Culler 1982, 86-88), although some relativists find this interpretation
problematic. In quantum mechanics, by contrast, this phenomenon is rather
firmly established (see Note 25 above).
38...causality
General relativity is also, of
course, the starting point for contemporary astrophysics and physical cosmology.
See Mathews (1991, 59-90, 109-116, 142-163) for a detailed analysis of
the connections between general relativity (and its generalizations called
‘‘geometrodynamics’’) and an ecological worldview. For an astrophysicist's
speculations along similar lines, see Primack and Abrams (1995).
39...center?
Discussion to Derrida (1970, 265-266).
40......
Derrida
(1970, 267).
Right-wing critics Gross and Levitt
(1994, 79) have ridiculed this statement, willfully misinterpreting it
as an assertion about special relativity, in which the Einsteinian
constant c (the speed of light in vacuum) is of course constant.
No reader conversant with modern physics — except an ideologically biased
one — could fail to understand Derrida's unequivocal reference to general
relativity.
41...physics
Luce Irigaray (1987, 77-78) has
pointed out that the contradictions between quantum theory and field theory
are in fact the culmination of a historical process that began with Newtonian
mechanics:
The Newtonian break has
ushered scientific enterprise into a world where sense perception is worth
little, a world which can lead to the annihilation of the very stakes of
physics' object: the matter (whatever the predicates) of the universe and
of the bodies that constitute it. In this very science, moreover [d'ailleurs],
cleavages exist: quantum theory/field theory, mechanics of solids/dynamics
of fluids, for example. But the imperceptibility of the matter under study
often brings with it the paradoxical privilege of solidity in discoveries
and a delay, even an abandoning of the analysis of the infinity [l'in-fini]
of the fields of force.
I have here corrected the translation
of ‘‘d'ailleurs’’, which means ‘‘moreover’’ or ‘‘besides’’ (not
‘‘however’’).
42...interconnections.
Wheeler (1964).
43...nonrenormalizable’’.
Isham (1991, sec. 3.1.4).
44...strings.
Green, Schwarz and Witten (1987).
45...theory.
Ashtekar, Rovelli and Smolin (1992),
Smolin (1992).
46...field.
Sheldrake (1981,1991), Briggs
and Peat (1984, chap. 4), Granero-Porati and Porati (1984), Kazarinoff
(1985), Schiffmann (1989), Psarev (1990), Brooks and Castor (1990), Heinonen,
Kilpeläinen and Martio (1992), Rensing (1993). For an in-depth treatment
of the mathematical background to this theory, see Thom (1975,1990); and
for a brief but insightful analysis of the philosophical underpinnings
of this and related approaches, see Ross (1991, 40-42, 253n).
47...biologists
Waddington (1965), Corner (1966),
Gierer et al. (1978).
48...field
Some early workers thought that
the morphogenetic field might be related to the electromagnetic field,
but it is now understood that this is merely a suggestive analogy: see
Sheldrake (1981, 77, 90) for a clear exposition. Note also point (b) below.
49...relativity.
Boulware and Deser (1975).
50...‘‘turf’’.
For another example of the ‘‘turf’’
effect, see Chomsky (1979, 6-7).
51...future.
To be fair to the high-energy-physics
establishment, I should mention that there is also an honest intellectual
reason for their opposition to this theory: inasmuch as it posits a subquantum
interaction linking patterns throughout the universe, it is, in physicists'
terminology, a ‘‘non-local field theory’’. Now, the history of classical
theoretical physics since the early 1800's, from Maxwell's electrodynamics
to Einstein's general relativity, can be read in a very deep sense as a
trend away from action-at-a-distance theories and towards local field
theories: in technical terms, theories expressible by partial differential
equations (Einstein and Infeld 1961, Hayles 1984). So a non-local field
theory definitely goes against the grain. On the other hand, as Bell (1987)
and others have convincingly argued, the key property of quantum mechanics
is precisely its non-locality, as expressed in Bell's theorem and
its generalizations (see Notes 23 and 24
above). Therefore, a non-local field theory, although jarring to physicists'
classical intuition, is not only natural but in fact preferred (and
possibly even mandatory?) in the quantum context. This is why classical
general relativity is a local field theory, while quantum gravity (whether
string, weave or morphogenetic field) is inherently non-local.
52...topology
Differential topology is the branch
of mathematics concerned with those properties of surfaces (and higher-dimensional
manifolds) that are unaffected by smooth deformations. The properties it
studies are therefore primarily qualitative rather than quantitative, and
its methods are holistic rather than Cartesian.
53...theories
Alvarez-Gaumé (1985). The alert
reader will notice that anomalies in ‘‘normal science’’ are the usual harbinger
of a future paradigm shift (Kuhn 1970).
54...transitions
Kosterlitz and Thouless (1973).
The flowering of the theory of phase transitions in the 1970's probably
reflects an increased emphasis on discontinuity and rupture in the wider
culture: see Note 81 below.
55...theories.
Green, Schwarz and Witten (1987).
56...years.
A typical such book is Nash and
Sen (1983).
57...disease.
Lacan (1970, 192-193), lecture
given in 1966. For an in-depth analysis of Lacan's use of ideas from mathematical
topology, see Juranville (1984, chap. VII), Granon-Lafont (1985,1990),
Vappereau (1985) and Nasio (1987,1992); a brief summary is given by Leupin
(1991). See Hayles (1990, 80) for an intriguing connection between Lacanian
topology and chaos theory; unfortunately she does not pursue it. See also
Zizek (1991, 38-39, 45-47) for some further homologies between Lacanian
theory and contemporary physics. Lacan also made extensive use of concepts
from set-theoretic number theory: see e.g. Miller (1977/78) and Ragland-Sullivan
(1990).
58...disease.
In bourgeois social psychology,
topological ideas had been employed by Kurt Lewin as early as the 1930's,
but this work foundered for two reasons: first, because of its individualist
ideological preconceptions; and second, because it relied on old-fashioned
point-set topology rather than modern differential topology and catastrophe
theory. Regarding the second point, see Back (1992).
59...requires’’.
Althusser (1993, 50): ‘‘Il suffit,
à cette fin, reconnaître que Lacan confère enfin à la pensée de Freud,
les concepts scientifiques qu'elle exige’’. This famous essay on ‘‘Freud
and Lacan’’ was first published in 1964, before Lacan's work had reached
its highest level of mathematical rigor. It was reprinted in English translation
in 1969 (New Left Review).
60...criticism
Miller (1977/78, especially pp.
24-25). This article has become quite influential in film theory: see e.g.
Jameson (1982, 27-28) and the references cited there. As Strathausen (1994,
69) indicates, Miller's article is tough going for the reader not well
versed in the mathematics of set theory. But it is well worth the effort.
For a gentle introduction to set theory, see Bourbaki (1970).
61...AIDS.
Dean (1993, especially pp. 107-108).
62...group
Homology theory is one of the
two main branches of the mathematical field called algebraic topology.
For an excellent introduction to homology theory, see Munkres (1984); or
for a more popular account, see Eilenberg and Steenrod (1952). A fully
relativistic homology theory is discussed e.g. in Eilenberg and Moore (1965).
For a dialectical approach to homology theory and its dual, cohomology
theory, see Massey (1978). For a cybernetic approach to homology, see Saludes
i Closa (1984).
63...cuts.
For the relation of homology to
cuts, see Hirsch (1976, 205-208); and for an application to collective
movements in quantum field theory, see Caracciolo et al. (1993,
especially app. A.1).
64...polynomial
Jones (1985).
65...theory.
Witten (1989).
66...5.
James (1971, 271-272). It is,
however, worth noting that the space
is homeomorphic to the group SO(3) of rotational symmetries of conventional
three-dimensional Euclidean space. Thus, some aspects of three-dimensional
Euclidicity are preserved (albeit in modified form) in the postmodern physics,
just as some aspects of Newtonian mechanics were preserved in modified
form in Einsteinian physics.
67...logic.
Kosko (1993). See also Johnson
(1977, 481-482) for an analysis of Derrida's and Lacan's efforts toward
transcending the Euclidean spatial logic.
68...logic.
Along related lines, Eve Seguin
(1994, 61) has noted that ‘‘logic says nothing about the world and attributes
to the world properties that are but constructs of theoretical thought.
This explains why physics since Einstein has relied on alternative logics,
such as trivalent logic which rejects the principle of the excluded middle.’’
A pioneering (and unjustly forgotten) work in this direction, likewise
inspired by quantum mechanics, is Lupasco (1951). See also Plumwood (1993b,
453-459) for a specifically feminist perspective on nonclassical logics.
For a critical analysis of one nonclassical logic (‘‘boundary logic’’)
and its relation to the ideology of cyberspace, see Markley (1994).
69......
Irigaray (1987, 76-77), essay
originally appeared in French in 1982. Irigaray's phrase ‘‘théorie des
ensembles’’ can also be rendered as ‘‘theory of sets’’, and ‘‘bords’’
is usually translated in the mathematical context as ‘‘boundaries’’. Her
phrase ‘‘ensembles flous’’ may refer to the new mathematical field
of ‘‘fuzzy sets’’ (Kaufmann 1973, Kosko 1993).
70...bord].
See e.g. Hamza (1990), McAvity
and Osborn (1991), Alexander, Berg and Bishop (1993) and the references
cited therein.
71...boundary.
Green, Schwarz and Witten (1987).
72...apace
Hamber (1992), Nabutosky and Ben-Av
(1993), Kontsevich (1994).
73...mathematicians.
In the history of mathematics
there has been a long-standing dialectic between the development of its
‘‘pure’’ and ‘‘applied’’ branches (Struik 1987). Of course, the ‘‘applications’’
traditionally privileged in this context have been those profitable to
capitalists or useful to their military forces: for example, number theory
has been developed largely for its applications in cryptography (Loxton
1990). See also Hardy (1967, 120-121, 131-132).
74...principle?
The equal representation of all
boundary conditions is also suggested by Chew's bootstrap theory of ‘‘subatomic
democracy’’: see Chew (1977) for an introduction, and see Morris (1988)
and Markley (1992) for philosophical analysis.
75...sciences.
Among the large body of works
from a diversity of politically progressive perspectives, the books by
Merchant (1980), Keller (1985), Harding (1986), Aronowitz (1988b), Haraway
(1991) and Ross (1991) have been especially influential. See also the references
cited below.
76...postmodernist.
Madsen and Madsen (1990, 471).
The main limitation of the Madsen-Madsen analysis is that it is essentially
apolitical; and it hardly needs to be pointed out that disputes over what
is true can have a profound effect on, and are in turn profoundly
affected by, disputes over political projects. Thus, Markley (1992,
270) makes a point similar to that of Madsen-Madsen, but rightly situates
it in its political context:
Radical critiques of science
that seek to escape the constraints of deterministic dialectics must also
give over narrowly conceived debates about realism and truth to investigate
what kind of realities — political realities — might be engendered by a
dialogical bootstrapping. Within a dialogically agitated environment, debates
about reality become, in practical terms, irrelevant. ‘‘Reality,’’ finally,
is a historical construct.
See Markley (1992, 266-272) and Hobsbawm
(1993, 63-64) for further discussion of the political implications.
77...theory.
Madsen and Madsen (1990, 471-472).
78...theory.
Aronowitz (1988b, 292-293) makes
a slightly different, but equally cogent, criticism of quantum chromodynamics
(the currently hegemonic theory representing nucleons as permanently bound
states of quarks and gluons): drawing on the work of Pickering (1984),
he notes that
in his [Pickering's] account,
quarks are the name assigned to (absent) phenomena that cohere with particle
rather than field theories, which, in each case, offer different, although
equally plausible, explanations for the same (inferred) observation. That
the majority of the scientific community chose one over another is a function
of scientists' preference for the tradition rather than the validity of
explanation. However, Pickering does not reach back far enough into the
history of physics to find the basis of the research tradition from which
the quark explanation emanates. It may not be found inside the tradition
but in the ideology of science, in the differences behind field versus
particle theories, simple versus complex explanations, the bias toward
certainty rather than indeterminateness.
Along very similar lines, Markley (1992,
269) observes that physicists' preference for quantum chromodynamics over
Chew's bootstrap theory of ‘‘subatomic democracy’’ (Chew 1977) is a result
of ideology rather than data:
It is not surprising, in
this regard, that bootstrap theory has fallen into relative disfavor among
physicists seeking a GUT (Grand Unified Theory) or TOE (Theory of Everything)
to explain the structure of the universe. Comprehensive theories that explain
‘‘everything’’ are products of the privileging of coherence and order in
western science. The choice between bootstrap theory and theories of everything
that confronts physicists does not have to do primarily with the
truth-value offered by these accounts of available data but with the narrative
structures — indeterminate or deterministic — into which these data are
placed and by which they are interpreted.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of
physicists are not yet aware of these incisive critiques of one of their
most fervently-held dogmas. For another critique of the hidden ideology
of contemporary particle physics, see Kroker et al. (1989, 158-162,
204-207). The style of this critique is rather too Baudrillardian for my
staid taste, but the content is (except for a few minor inaccuracies) right
on target.
79...interests.’’
Ross (1991, 29). For an amusing
example of how this modest demand has driven right-wing scientists into
fits of apoplexy (‘‘frighteningly Stalinist’’ is the chosen epithet), see
Gross and Levitt (1994, 91).
80...theories.
Oliver (1989, 146).
81...gravity.
While
chaos theory has been deeply studied by cultural analysts — see e.g. Hayles
(1990,1991), Argyros (1991), Best (1991), Young (1991,1992), Assad (1993)
among many others — the theory of phase transitions has passed largely
unremarked. (One exception is the discussion of the renormalization group
in Hayles (1990, 154-158).) This is a pity, because discontinuity and the
emergence of multiple scales are central features in this theory; and it
would be interesting to know how the development of these themes in the
1970's and afterwards is connected to trends in the wider culture. I therefore
suggest this theory as a fruitful field for future research by cultural
analysts. Some theorems on discontinuity which may be relevant to this
analysis can be found in Van Enter, Fernández and Sokal (1993).
82...fluidity.
Irigaray (1985), Hayles (1992).
See, however, Schor (1989) for a critique of Irigaray's undue deference
toward conventional (male) science, particularly physics.
83...theory
Thom (1975,1990), Arnol'd (1992).
84...observation.
Concerning the Cartesian/Baconian
metaphysics, Robert Markley (1991, 6) has observed that
Narratives of scientific
progress depend upon imposing binary oppositions — true/false, right/wrong
— on theoretical and experimental knowledge, privileging meaning over noise,
metonymy over metaphor, monological authority over dialogical contention.
... [T]hese attempts to fix nature are ideologically coercive as well as
descriptively limited. They focus attention only on the small range of
phenomena — say, linear dynamics — which seem to offer easy, often idealized
ways of modeling and interpreting humankind's relationship to the universe.
While this observation is informed primarily
by chaos theory — and secondarily by nonrelativistic quantum mechanics
— it in fact summarizes beautifully the radical challenge to modernist
metaphysics posed by quantum gravity.
85...nature.’’
Capra (1988, 145). One caveat:
I have strong reservations about Capra's use here of the word ‘‘cyclical’’,
which if interpreted too literally could promote a politically regressive
quietism. For further analyses of these issues, see Bohm (1980), Merchant
(1980,1992), Berman (1981), Prigogine and Stengers (1984), Bowen (1985),
Griffin (1988), Kitchener (1988), Callicott (1989, chaps. 6 and 9), Shiva
(1990), Best (1991), Haraway (1991,1994), Mathews (1991), Morin (1992),
Santos (1992) and Wright (1992).
86...universe.
Markley (1992, 264). A minor quibble:
It is not clear to me that complex number theory, which is a new and still
quite speculative branch of mathematical physics, ought to be accorded
the same epistemological status as the three firmly established sciences
cited by Markley.
87...universe.
See Wallerstein (1993, 17-20)
for an incisive and closely analogous account of how the postmodern physics
is beginning to borrow ideas from the historical social sciences; and see
Santos (1989,1992) for a more detailed development.
88...attempt.
Aronowitz (1988b, 344).
89...non-members.
At this point, the traditional
scientist's response is that work not conforming to the evidentiary standards
of conventional science is fundamentally irrational, i.e. logically
flawed and therefore not worthy of credence. But this refutation is insufficient:
for, as Porush (1993) has lucidly observed, modern mathematics and physics
have themselves admitted a powerful ‘‘intrusion of the irrational’’
in quantum mechanics and Gödel's theorem — although, understandably, like
the Pythagoreans 24 centuries ago, modernist scientists have attempted
to exorcise this unwanted irrational element as best they could. Porush
makes a powerful plea for a ‘‘post-rational epistemology’’ that would retain
the best of conventional Western science while validating alternative ways
of knowing.
Note also that Jacques Lacan, from
a quite different starting point, came long ago to a similar appreciation
of the inevitable role of irrationality in modern mathematics:
If you'll permit me to use
one of those formulas which come to me as I write my notes, human life
could be defined as a calculus in which zero was irrational. This formula
is just an image, a mathematical metaphor. When I say ‘‘irrational,’’ I'm
referring not to some unfathomable emotional state but precisely to what
is called an imaginary number. The square root of minus one doesn't correspond
to anything that is subject to our intuition, anything real — in the mathematical
sense of the term — and yet, it must be conserved, along with its full
function.
[Lacan (1977, 28-29), seminar originally
given in 1959.] For further reflections on irrationality in modern mathematics,
see Solomon (1988, 76) and Bloor (1991, 122-125).
90...life.
See e.g. Aronowitz (1994) and
the discussion following it.
91...socialism.
Markley (1992, 271).
92...environment.
Markley (1992, 271). Along parallel
lines, Donna Haraway (1991, 191-192) has argued eloquently for a democratic
science comprising ‘‘partial, locatable, critical knowledges sustaining
the possibility of webs of connections called solidarity in politics and
shared conversations in epistemology’’ and founded on ‘‘a doctrine and
practice of objectivity that privileges contestation, deconstruction, passionate
construction, webbed connections, and hope for transformation of systems
of knowledge and ways of seeing.’’ These ideas are further developed in
Haraway (1994) and Doyle (1994).
93...subfield.’’
Aronowitz (1988b, 351). Although
this observation appeared in 1988, it is all the more true today.
94...system.
Freire (1970), Aronowitz and Giroux
(1991,1993).
95...characteristics
For an example in the context
of the Sandinista revolution, see Sokal (1987).
96...feminist
Merchant (1980), Easlea (1981),
Keller (1985,1992), Harding (1986,1991), Haraway (1989,1991), Plumwood
(1993a). See Wylie et al. (1990) for an extensive bibliography.
The feminist critique of science has, not surprisingly, been the object
of a bitter right-wing counterattack. For a sampling, see Levin (1988),
Haack (1992,1993), Sommers (1994), Gross and Levitt (1994, chap. 5) and
Patai and Koertge (1994).
97...queer
Trebilcot (1988), Hamill (1994).
98...multiculturalist
Ezeabasili (1977), Van Sertima
(1983), Frye (1987), Sardar (1988), Adams (1990), Nandy (1990), Alvares
(1992), Harding (1994). As with the feminist critique, the multiculturalist
perspective has been ridiculed by right-wing critics, with a condescension
that in some cases borders on racism. See e.g. Ortiz de Montellano (1991),
Martel (1991/92), Hughes (1993, chap. 2) and Gross and Levitt (1994, 203-214).
99...ecological
Merchant (1980,1992), Berman (1981),
Callicott (1989, chaps. 6 and 9), Mathews (1991), Wright (1992), Plumwood
(1993a), Ross (1994).
100...mathematics.
See Wojciehowski (1991) for a
deconstruction of Galileo's rhetoric, in particular his claim that the
mathematico-scientific method can lead to direct and reliable knowledge
of ‘‘reality’’.
101...mathematics.
A very recent but important contribution
to the philosophy of mathematics can be found in the work of Deleuze and
Guattari (1994, chap. 5). Here they introduce the philosophically fruitful
notion of a ‘‘functive’’ [Fr. fonctif], which is neither a function
[Fr. fonction] nor a functional [Fr. fonctionnelle] but rather
a more basic conceptual entity:
The object of science is
not concepts but rather functions that are presented as propositions in
discursive systems. The elements of functions are called functives.
[p. 117]
This apparently simple idea has surprisingly
subtle and far-reaching consequences; its elucidation requires a detour
into chaos theory (see also Rosenberg 1993 and Canning 1994):
...the first difference
between science and philosophy is their respective attitudes toward chaos.
Chaos is defined not so much by its disorder as by the infinite speed with
which every form taking shape in it vanishes. It is a void that is not
a nothingness but a virtual, containing all possible particles and
drawing out all possible forms, which spring up only to disappear immediately,
without consistency or reference, without consequence. Chaos is an infinite
speed of birth and disappearance. [pp. 117-118]
But science, unlike philosophy, cannot
cope with infinite speeds:
...it is by slowing down
that matter, as well as the scientific thought able to penetrate it [sic]
with propositions, is actualized. A function is a Slow-motion. Of course,
science constantly advances accelerations, not only in catalysis but in
particle accelerators and expansions that move galaxies apart. However,
the primordial slowing down is not for these phenomena a zero-instant with
which they break but rather a condition coextensive with their whole development.
To slow down is to set a limit in chaos to which all speeds are subject,
so that they form a variable determined as abscissa, at the same time as
the limit forms a universal constant that cannot be gone beyond (for example,
a maximum degree of contraction). The first functives are therefore
the limit and the variable, and reference is a relationship between
values of the variable or, more profoundly, the relationship of the variable,
as abscissa of speeds, with the limit. [pp. 118-119, emphasis mine]
A rather intricate further analysis
(too lengthy to quote here) leads to a conclusion of profound methodological
importance for those sciences based on mathematical modelling:
The respective independence
of variables appears in mathematics when one of them is at a higher power
than the first. That is why Hegel shows that variability in the function
is not confined to values that can be changed (
and
) or are left undetermined (a=2b) but requires one of the variables
to be at a higher power (
). [p. 122]
(Note that the English translation inadvertently
writes
, an amusing error that thoroughly mangles the logic of the argument.)
Surprisingly for a technical philosophical work, this book (Qu'est-ce
que la philosophie?) was a best-seller in France in 1991. It has recently
appeared in English translation, but is, alas, unlikely to compete successfully
with Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern for the best-seller lists in this country.
102...social.’’
Aronowitz (1988b, 346). For a
vicious right-wing attack on this proposition, see Gross and Levitt (1994,
52-54). See Ginzberg (1989), Cope-Kasten (1989), Nye (1990) and Plumwood
(1993b) for lucid feminist critiques of conventional (masculinist) mathematical
logic, in particular the modus ponens and the syllogism. Concerning
the modus ponens, see also Woolgar (1988, 45-46) and Bloor (1991,
182); and concerning the syllogism, see also Woolgar (1988, 47-48) and
Bloor (1991, 131-135). For an analysis of the social images underlying
mathematical conceptions of infinity, see Harding (1986, 50). For a demonstration
of the social contextuality of mathematical statements, see Woolgar (1988,
43) and Bloor (1991, 107-130).
103...Other.’’
Campbell and Campbell-Wright (1993,
11). See Merchant (1980) for a detailed analysis of the themes of control
and domination in Western mathematics and science.
104...Other.’’
Let me mention in passing two
other examples of sexism and militarism in mathematics that to my knowledge
have not been noticed previously: The first concerns the theory of branching
processes, which arose in Victorian England from the ‘‘problem of the extinction
of families’’, and which now plays a key role inter alia in the
analysis of nuclear chain reactions (Harris 1963). In the seminal (and
this sexist word is apt) paper on the subject, Francis Galton and the Reverend
H.W. Watson wrote (1874):
The decay of the families
of men who occupied conspicuous positions in past times has been a subject
of frequent research, and has given rise to various conjectures ...The
instances are very numerous in which surnames that were once common have
since become scarce or have wholly disappeared. The tendency is universal,
and, in explanation of it, the conclusion has hastily been drawn that a
rise in physical comfort and intellectual capacity is necessarily accompanied
by a diminution in `fertility' ... Let
be the respective probabilities that a man has 0,1,2,... sons of his own,
and so on. What is the probability that the male line is extinct after
r generations, and more generally what is the probability for any
given number of descendants in the male line in any given generation?
One cannot fail to be charmed by the
quaint implication that human males reproduce asexually; nevertheless,
the classism, social-Darwinism and sexism in this passage are obvious.
The second example is Laurent Schwartz's 1973 book on Radon Measures.
While technically quite interesting, this work is imbued, as its title
makes plain, with the pro-nuclear-energy worldview that has been characteristic
of French science since the early 1960's. Sadly, the French left — especially
but by no means solely the PCF — has traditionally been as enthusiastic
for nuclear energy as the right (see Touraine et al. 1980).
105...mathematics.
Just as liberal feminists are
frequently content with a minimal agenda of legal and social equality for
women and ‘‘pro-choice’’, so liberal (and even some socialist) mathematicians
are often content to work within the hegemonic Zermelo-Fraenkel framework
(which, reflecting its nineteenth-century liberal origins, already incorporates
the axiom of equality) supplemented only by the axiom of choice. But this
framework is grossly insufficient for a liberatory mathematics, as was
proven long ago by Cohen (1966).
106...theory
Kosko (1993).
107...relations.
Fuzzy systems theory has been
heavily developed by transnational corporations — first in Japan and later
elsewhere — to solve practical problems of efficiency in labor-displacing
automation.
108...theory
Thom (1975,1990), Arnol'd (1992).
109...praxis.
An interesting start is made
by Schubert (1989).
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