decisions

Decisions, decisions

by Nancy Roth · Published July 1, 2020 · Updated August 22, 2020

Drawings or models of decision-making seem always to convey a sense of flow, constant change, but orderly and clear. What doesn’t appear in any such models is the experience of having to decide in full awareness of not having all the relevant information, contending with a strong aesthetic “pull” toward one or another of the available alternatives, or just not being aware of facing a decision in the first place.

image: https://users.cs.duke.edu/~kamesh/Fall09Course.html

The idea comes from particle physics, from the effort to measure matter — particles — and getting mixed up with them. Heisenberg talked about the uncertainty of the resulting measurement. But that seems to keep the distinction between the measurer and the measured intact: the measurer just can’t quite be sure whether the result is accurate. Bohr spoke of indeterminacy, which seems to imply more: that the identities of measurer, measured and apparatus are all fluid.

Karen Barad’s book Meeting the Universe Halfway has been reverberating in my mind since I first read it, just over two years ago. Barad is a particle physicist, a feminist, and the designer of a philosophical position she calls agential realism. It positions us, human beings, as both observing and consisting of matter, both examining aspects of reality and participating in it.

On this site, I’m trying to adapt these ideas to my own purposes, to grasp the crucial terms — intra-action, uncertainty, indeterminacy, diffraction, measurement, entanglement as they might apply to familiar experiences. I want to “translate,” that is, from the context of particle physics into the language English-speakers use to describe transactions with matter and their intra-action with what matters, such as air, water, plants, trees and one another. Barad has made a very strong start.

As I finished my first reading of the book, it seemed to say that human beings would do well to approach matter — including themselves and one another — with broad humility, restraint and wonder. This voice from an utterly unfamiliar world, had a stronger authority for me than any religious teaching I have encountered so far.

Decisions, decisions

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