Week 5 Blog Assignment: Uncertainty and Matter

This week, you’ve got some thought provoking and challenging material. You’ll be reading Frayn’s Copenhagen, which provides several accounts of a meeting between Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in 1941, as well as Barad’s critiques of both Frayn’s interpretations (there are three) of the event and of the ways he interprets the physics. Barad is interested in the epistemology, ontology, and ethics at work in Frayn’s play, and, more broadly, in how we think about science.

Heisenberg and Bohr

As you write your post this week, we want you to think about the relationship between the philosophical concepts of epistemology, ontology, and ethics in the case of Copenhagen. On Monday, Group 2 will lead discussion on this and on Wednesday, you’ll be thinking about contemporary issues in science in terms of these three interrelated concepts, and about how to draw on them to create dialogue about a controversial scientific or technological topic.

Our discussion this week also happens against the backdrop of WWII, the holocaust, and the rise of totalitarianism, especially in Germany. While the short piece in Physics Today focuses on the practical implications of antisemitism and naziism in Germany, the moral implications of the scientific exodus from Germany are profound and still very relevant.

That’s a lot. So, instead of giving you a writing challenge this week, we simply want you to do your best to address the following prompt:

On page 18, Barad writes,

Another crucial point that i have yet to discus is the fact that Frayn continually confuses the epistemological and ontological issues — issues concerning the nature of knowledge and the nature of being.

What does Barad mean by this? Describe, as best you can, the epistemological, ontological, and ethical issues Frayn is wrestling with in the play, and try to understand Barad’s critique of his interpretations.

Some advice for reading scholarly material

As requested in class, I’m adding my advice for reading here.

Barad’s work is not narrative; it isn’t like Redniss’ account of the Curies or Frayn’s play. You’ll use a different set of skills when reading scholarly work like Barad’s, and you’ll want to approach reading differently. Here are a few tips that will help you.

• Don’t read from beginning to end. You are not following a narrative and there are no spoilers :). Instead, you are trying to understand an academic argument. To do this, we suggest looking at the section headings, reading the first and last paragraphs, skimming (perhaps reading the first sentence of each paragraph), and then going back and reading through, focusing on what’s most important to you. You are aiming for a general understanding of the overall claim and a clear, more specific understanding of the aspects of the claim that are most relevant to your project.
• Take notes as you read. Highlighting will only get you so far. MKH says: I like to make a reverse outline as I read, which is why I start by jotting down the section headings and then filling in the main points between each heading. Explore a bit to find a way that works best for you.
• Look up words/concepts you don’t know. Sometimes you can get definitions of new words from context, but in scholarly work, often these terms are important to know. You can begin with a dictionary, but sometimes dictionary definitions aren’t specific enough for philosophcial terms. There’s no shame in checking Wikipedia, though you may want to make sure an entry has been well vetted. There’s also the Internet Encylcopedia of Philosophy, and Stanford’s Plato, which are a bit more in depth, but offer nice one or two paragraph overviews at the beginning of each entry.
• Relax. You do not have to understand every single word ,or sentence, or even paragraph. You want to get the big picture and the details that help you fill it in. You want to be able to talk about the text in terms of ideas and examples. You do not need to be an expert on the text or have it memorized.

Remember, your grade for these posts only depends on clear attention to detail and effort, not on “getting it right,” so this is a good place to take risks and go out on a limb.

Please use the tags LB492 and LB492Week5.