What To Make of Applying Quantum Theory To History?

Two parts of me find Nathan Gardels's A Quantum Theory Of History (NOEMA) intriguing. Mr. Gardels is expanding on work by Slavoj Žižek only increases my interest. One part is the would-be historian - as an alternative to cyclical theories and to the deterministic view of history. As a writer, it opens my imagination to another way of presenting reality.

The article's thesis: 

For Žižek, all major ideologies, from Liberalism to Marxism, believe history has a direction that moves inexorably toward their universal realization. But today, he maintains, we live in a moment where you can’t draw a straight line to the future.

But for writing fiction, it may help deal with a problem I keep having. That problem is too much happening, too much pulling this way and twisting that, and all that noise.

... Coherence and equilibrium are “the momentary exception” in the random swirl of disequilibrium that is the rule. For Paz, the rhythm of time is cyclical, following this pattern. 

And is this essentially a story?

 As Laozi wrote in the Tao Te Ching “the Dao that can be stated cannot be the universal (or eternal) Dao” because the concrete circumstances of existence are always in flux. It is all about the conjunction of relations revealed at a moment in time and a place in space. 

What necessity of history put Romeo into the room with Juliet? Or cost Ahab his leg? Or James Bond on HM's Secret Service?

That's just plotting, right? And plotting is a form of deterministic history, right?

Not if plot is the interaction of character. Blood Simple comes to mind - and much of the Coen brothers' work.

 The principle of reverse movement also “cautions us against the hubris of making linear predictions about upward-trending social tides and urges us to embrace the intricacies of complexity and acknowledge the multifaceted interplay of diverse forces. By doing so, we are compelled to appreciate the heterogeneous nature of historical change.”

Such thinking may also explain the breakup of The Beatles. 

Returning to the issue of history. As a theory about history, it also seems congruent with William James' idea of a pluralistic universe.

As Žižek argued in a video interview prior to the lecture, the notion of “superposition” in quantum physics “fits our circumstances perfectly.” In this condition, multiple, non-universal configurations, or states of being, can exist simultaneously on trajectories that are not predetermined.

***

In Žižek’s view, you see this everywhere. “In China, as Xi Jinping recently said, ‘We need to teach young people what? Not Mao, but Confucian tradition.’ Then you have Modi in India, Erdogan in Turkey and Putin in his own way in Russia.” Trump’s America now joins the mix. Instead of some harmoniously balanced multipolar order, Žižek sees each “trying to create their own small empire” in a discordant world.

Both the Enlightenment and anti-Enlightenment strains live side by side, neither with a determinist advantage in the long run, and both in a state of perpetual transformation.

In short, history is open in all directions. There is no through line you can draw that will tell us where it will all go and where it will end up. There are a multitude of possibilities and arrays of conditions everywhere, all at once, that will only have looked inevitable in retrospect. 

Returning to James, consider this review of William James, A Pluralistic Universe, in particular this:

James’s pluralistic view contests that an absolute logical union of reality could never be possible, and he makes clear his thought denying the possibility of exclusive “internal relations,” which means relations only internal to their terms. Conceptual identity can never fully grasp reality in all of its variety. Such a view should be also considered the core of James nominalist temptation. As Callaway sustains, nominalism is in accordance with classic pragmatist fallibilism, which is a methodological and theoretical view through which our theories and scientific laws should always leave margins for growth and revision. There is nothing in our universe that can be considered definitive a priori, neither in our scientific knowledge, nor in our social bonds or identitarian relations. The pluralist suggests that reality is not a complete unity, all connected and perfect, but there is always something escaping from our knowledge: something “not yet considered.” Pragmatist anti-essentialism and humanism, as clearly disclosed in the preface of this edition, are important to corroborate the conviction that doesn’t exist such a previous nature of the world, something ready-made and absolute; it is time to figure out another image of human relations where ideas don’t fall down from above, but human beings are “real causes in nature.”

And also back to writing fiction - characters cause the world.

sch 8/18