1 min read
| Status | Active — read in full 2026-10-27 (NOTE-1220); worth reading as the assessment of agential realism from philosophy of physics: Barad's Bohr is not Bohr's (phenomena epistemic, Bohr an entity realist, the dualisms presupposed), quantum mechanics does not entail agential realism (Bohmian mechanics; relational quantum mechanics keeps systems prior to interactions), and agential realism has no answer to the measurement problem as it stands. |
| Version | 2 |
| Tags | quantum-foundations, philosophy-of-science, metaphysics |
| Cited as “paper” by | NOTE-1220 — Faye & Jaksland — Barad, Bohr, and quantum mechanics |
| Cited as “source” by | THEORY-1071 — Quantum mechanics does not entail agential realism: Bohmian mechanics reproduces its predictions with an ontology of individual particles on determinate trajectories, and relational quantum mechanics, the interpretation Barad names as closest, makes values relational while keeping the systems prior to their interactions, THEORY-1076 — For Bohr a phenomenon is the observation obtained under a specified experimental arrangement, epistemic and derivative, with atomic object and instrument presupposed real; his relational holism is epistemic, and the subject–object, knower–known and word–world dualisms are presupposed by his account, so Bohr's authority does not support agential realism, THEORY-1091 — Agential realism has no answer to the measurement problem as it stands: holding that measurement never disentangles apparatus and object, it cannot borrow relational quantum mechanics' treatment of the wave function as bookkeeping without giving up the ontological holism, and its appeal to an improper mixture does not explain why one value is found |
Faye, J., & Jaksland, R. (2021). Barad, Bohr, and quantum mechanics. Synthese, 199(3–4), 8231–8255. doi:10.1007/s11229-021-03160-1.
Read in full on 2026-10-27 (NOTE-1220).
A4 §7B and A6 §5A gave it as the major objection to the quantum motivation, put as “Compatible with quantum mechanics is not equivalent to entailed by quantum mechanics”. It is the counterweight to LIT-1657, and the reason CLAIM-476 borrows Barad’s notion of an apparatus without her quantum interpretation.