Source
Jaksland (2024), LIT-1673, pp. 371–373 and note 21; read in NOTE-1230.
What was actually shown
Jaksland separates three conceptions. Analogy: quantum concepts used metaphorically outside physics. Template: “an overarching metaphysical template that is claimed to be instantiated by quantum mechanics and which may also be instantiated in other domains”, its concepts “content-neutral generalizations of their quantum mechanical counterparts” (p. 372). Naturalized metaphysics: “constrained and justified by science irrespective of the context in which this metaphysics is applied”.
Barad’s text rules out the first two. Against analogy: “I am not interested in drawing analogies between particles and people, the micro and the macro, the scientific and the social, nature and culture; rather, I am interested in understanding the epistemological and ontological issues that quantum physics forces us to confront” (2007, 24). Against the template, which would stratify ontology into realms: “quantum mechanics is not a theory that applies only to small objects … As far as we know, the universe is not broken up into two separate domains” (2007, 85). Note 21: agential realism “is only deployed and applied once, as an account of fundamental reality. It thus never leaves physics, but rather extends its scope from there to the macroscopic contexts.” Hollin et al. (2017) read it as a template, and Jaksland reads against them.
The reading could have come out otherwise: Barad could have licensed structural transfer, as generalized quantum theory does (note 22). Her text does not.
What this does not say
- That Barad’s conception is right, or that agential realism is correct quantum mechanics (THEORY-1071).
- That the template conception is illegitimate in itself. It is a coherent way to use the concepts; it is not Barad’s, and its use in a domain then needs that domain’s own warrant.
- What follows for the lifeworld. That turns on metaphysical approximation (THEORY-1086).