NP no facts only interpretations

[Dave Monroe]

Okay, have the Mark Bauerstein article at hand, I do
note that he does note that Terry Eagleton's "Literary
Theory: An Introduction hardly counts as a serious
discussion of literary theory," which isn't quite a
bluntly as I'd've put it, but ... but he continues
with the generalization, "but its tactics have come to
dominate humanities criticism."  I can't tell that he
backs that claim up, even with anecdotal evidence. 
Seems very thin on documenatation, argumentation for
an essay which demands it of others.  

Chuckled a bit at his final paragraph--I've no
professional stake in, much less time for, painstaking
library legwork, but I think most here will grant that
I've done my time nonetheless.  If anything, I'd
imagine complaints about research and bibliographic
excesses in most works I'd take to be thsoe under fire
here (think Deleuze and Guattari's Thousand Plateaus
alone ...), references to God knows what in every
which direction.  But those complaints wouldn't be
coming from me.  I tend to go right to the footnotes,
endnotes, bibliographies.  Follow the links.  I've
been online as long as I've been reading ...

Anyway, a quick note on that wave/particle "duality." 
Of course, this "duality" is precisely what Bohm
questions.  Cushing and Beller, it should be noted,
are not necessarily "social constructivists" per se,
perhaps not in any strong sense, at any rate.  Rather,
they trace the way in which a particular
interpretation of quantum mechanics (the standard,
"Copenhagen" interpretation) eventually became the
standard, over, say, the sort of monism, holism,
whatever, of the sort Bohm proposed.  How that
standard, perhaps, was "constructed" "socially."  This
sounded interesting as well ...

Fine, Arthur.  The Shaky Game: Einstein, Realism
   and the Quantum Theory.  Chicago: U of Chicago P,
   1986.

And I see I actually have ...

Fine, Arthur.  "Science Made Up: Constructivist 
   Sociology of Scientific Knowledge."  The Disunity
   of Science: Boundaries, Contexts and Power.  Ed.
   P. Galison and D.J. Stump.  Stanford, CA: Stanford
   UP, 1996.

So I'll take a look at that as well.  But "the social
construction of quantum reality," that's an
interesting notion, given just how very few people
really are able in any strong sense ABLE to "contruct"
"reality" in a qunatum physical way.  And I'm not
talking Gary Zukav or Ken Wilber or whoever here ...
but for most people, physics, like "theory," these
days is pretty much an angels/pinheads proposition,
conducted in the requisite Latin, of course, except
that most of them not only have firsthand empirical
experience of (pace Nietzsche's hysteron-proteron
"deconstruction" thereof), but also actually believe
in angels ...

--- Dave Monroe <davidmmonroe at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> If only I had the time to give these the close
> readings they deserve, but ...
> 
> Beller, Mara.  Quantum Dialogue: The Making of a
>    Revolution.  Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1999.
> 
> Bohm, David and B.J. Hiley.  The Undivided Universe.
>    New York: Routledge, 1995.
> 
> Cushing, James T.  Quantum Mechanics: Historical
>    Contingency and the Copenhagen Hegemony.
>    Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1994.
> 
> Norris, Christopher.  Quantum Theory and the Flight
>    From Realism: Philosophical Responses to Quantum
>    Mechanics.  New York: Routledge, 2000.

And, again, anyone familiar with ...

> Hacking, Ian.  The Social Construction of What?
>    Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1999.

The classic here, however, of course, is ...

Berger, John and Thomas Luckmann.  The Social
   Construction of Reality: A Treatise its the
   Sociology of Knowledge.  Garden City, NY:
   Anchor Books, 1966.

Okay, still catching up ...

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