How, then, does the Badiouian Event stand with regard to formulae of sexuation? Some Lacanian feminist critics claim that the exceptional status of the Event with regard to ordinary “human-animal” life, its status as the exception to universality, compels us to locate it on the male side of the formulae—and, indeed, is not this logic of exception to universality confirmed by Badiou’s own formulations, such as when he says: “There is nothing but bodies and languages …,” to which materialist dialectics adds “…with the exception of truths” (Alain Badiou, Logiques des mondes, Paris: Seuil 2006, p. 9)? Furthermore, does not the heroic-phallic connotation of the fidelity to an Event (the idea of “enforcing” the truth) also bear witness to its masculine nature? There is nonetheless a key feature which renders such a reading problematic, convincing as it may appear: on the male side of Lacan’s formulae of sexuation, the exception is the exception to universality (all but x are …) which, as such, grounds this universality, while in the case of the Badiouian Truth-Event, the evental Truth is universal; i.e., here, exception does not ground universality (with regard to which it is an exception), the exception (an evental Truth) is universality. Or, to put it in another way, universality is here singular, it is what Hegel called a universality “for itself,” a universality posited as such in a singular point. Or, to put yet another way, universality is here not the outcome of a neutral view to which we gain access after elevating ourselves above particular or partial engaged positions; universality is, on the contrary, something which is accessible only to an engaged subjective position. The supreme case here is the Marxian proletariat which stands for the exception, the “part of no-part,” of the social body, and is precisely as such the “universal class.”
Slavoj Žižek 2012 Less Than Nothing, page 812 footnote
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“putative observer becomes fatally de-centered, disconnected from any epistemic link to a space-time point that can no longer be defined by geometry alone” Alan Sokal 1995 Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity
At the invitation of Bohr, Schrödinger visited Copenhagen in September, 1926, to lecture on wave mechanics. Long discussions, lasting several days, then took place concerning the foundations of quantum theory, in which Schrödinger was able to give a convincing picture of the new simple ideas of wave mechanics, while Bohr explained to him that not even Planck’s Law could be understood without the quantum jumps. – “If we are going to stick to this damned quantum-jumping, then I regret that I ever had anything to do with quantum theory,” Schrödinger exclaimed finally in despair, to which Bohr replied: – “But the rest of us are thankful that you did, because you have contributed so much to the clarification of the quantum theory.”
(Heisenberg, 1955, tribute book for the 70th birthday of Niels Bohr)
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Schrödinger’s reductio ad absurdum of quantum-jump: A cat video
In the Istanbul KCK* trials, ‘Quantum’, ‘Big Bang Theory’ and ‘Evolution Theory’ courses given in BDP* Politics Academy have been added to the criminal charges by the prosecutors. In the Van KCK trial, voluntary physics teacher Meral Güngör’s courses where she taught quantum physics have been depicted as “organizational activity”*.
During Van KCK trial, in the criminal charges where all activities of the accused have been said to have been done in behalf of “organization”, courses of Meral Güngör where she taught quantum physics have also been depicted as “organizational activity”. She is one of Van Municipality’s educators in the Education Supporthouse.
The criminal charges claimed that Politics Academy, appearing to work in direction with BDP’s political tasks, in reality was supplying ideological education for KCK instead, teaching KCK philosophy to the participants. According to statements of hidden wittnesses, Meral Güngör, one of the voluntary educators in Politics Academy and Education Supporthouse, was claimed to give “organizational” educations. Being a physics graduate, Güngör, in her defence which she made in Zaza* language, said she was voluntarily giving quantum physics courses in the academy. Stating that there is no concrete grounds to accuse her courses about quantum to be “organizational activity”, Güngör said “I am a physics graduate. And quantum is a topic of physics courses. Naturally it is unlawfulness to depict quantum courses that i have given as organizational activities. Then tell me, are faculty members giving quantum courses in universities also guilty?”.
‘ONLY BDP IS BEING INVESTIGATED’
Murat Timur, president of Van Bar Association, told that it was an abstract accusation to describe Güngör’s lessons in academy as “organizational activity”. Timur said “Politics academies of CHP*, BDP and AKP* have been founded after 2006. The recommendation to found such politics academies was made by Sayın* Öcalan*. In a short time it was reflected to all of the political parties. But only BDP’s politics academies encountered investigations.”
QUANTUM WAS HEAVY FOR THE PROSECUTOR
In the Istanbul KCK trials, courses like ‘Quantum’, ‘Big Bang Theory’ and ‘Evolution Theory’ given in BDP Politics Academy had been added to the criminal charges by the prosecutors, but their audio surveillance documents in the criminal charges were not read in the trial, because chief judge did not want them read. The 50 pages consisting of philosophical theories were skipped by Ali Alçık, Chief Judge of Istanbul 15th Heavy Penalty Court, by saying “These parts are too heavy” and he stopped early the hearing in 17 December 2012.
During his time in prison, Abdullah Öcalan read science books among other books, and wrote his own interpretation of quantum theory among other topics.
ideology in the truly purest… these are from Karen Barad’s Meeting the universe halfway: quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning (2007) a book referenced in Zizek’s Less Than Nothing:
APPENDIX A: Cascade Experiment by Alice Fulton
Because faith creates its verification and reaching you will be no harder than believing in a planet’s caul of plasma, or interacting with a comet in its peri helion passage, no harder than considering what sparking of the vacuum, cosmological (and so on and so on)
APPENDIX B: THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE IS NOT THE BASIS OF COMPLEMENTARITY
Einstein was tenacious in his efforts to find a way to defeat the uncertainty principle, and his arguments inevitably focus on the question of *disturbance*. But one should not depend on Einstein’s framing of the question to frame Bohr’s response, since Bohr is continually calling into question the premises of Einstein’s challenges. Physicists are well acquainted with arguments concerning disturbances in the form of momentum exchanges; their backgrounds in classical physics make this mode of thinking quite natural. On the other hand, it is certainly *not* part of our training to question the intuitive ontological assumption that individual objects possess inherently determinate properties and that the role of measurement is to reveal such properties. (and so on and so on)
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And the following piece was written by Heisenberg in 1955, for a tribute book for the 70th birthday of Niels Bohr:
At the invitation of Bohr, Schrödinger visited Copenhagen in September, 1926, to lecture on wave mechanics. Long discussions, lasting several days, then took place concerning the foundations of quantum theory, in which Schrödinger was able to give a convincing picture of the new simple ideas of wave mechanics, while Bohr explained to him that not even Planck’s Law could be understood without the quantum jumps. – “If we are going to stick to this damned quantum-jumping, then I regret that I ever had anything to do with quantum theory,” Schrödinger exclaimed finally in despair, to which Bohr replied: – “But the rest of us are thankful that you did, because you have contributed so much to the clarification of the quantum theory.”
***
let’s summarize: – schrödinger felt very *disturbed* about quantum jumps and argued against it (for instance in his article “are there quantum jumps” etc) – mr. niels bohr said to schrödinger that “even planck’s law requires the concept of quantum jumps” and personally acknowledged schrödinger’s “scientific contribution”, against his *disturbance*. – heisenberg watched this happen but 29 years later felt the need to report this incidence in a book edited in mr. niels bohr’s honour (maybe he was *uncertain*?) – what we call “heisenberg’s uncertainty principle” conceptually relies on planck’s “constant” in his “law”. — 52 years after this tribute book, a philosophical book on quantum theory has three appendices: 1) a poem that makes “quantum” into enjoy-meant 2) an explanation, a *negation* in capital letters, which says: “oh don’t worry, it’s not about heisenberg’s *uncertainty*… well, einstein may have been questioning some *disturbance*, but disturbances are not our job, right?.. things happen, we just measure…” 3) controversy concerning the problem
from this i conclude again that: quantum-jump is master-signifier
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i think the main battleground is statistics. i found schrödinger’s “science and human temperament” a very interesting book in ideological terms, he very clearly formulates his wish for a statistical management of society (that one should capture all averages and cover all variances), and i began reading fisher’s statistics book, where he makes a de facto distinctions that determines ideological grounds for the current scientific discourse.
in summary: scientific discourse acts as a metaphor that strengthens ideological basis, but technological structures (like social media here) creates media where scientific metaphors can no longer function…. (also movies, fiction etc)
the basic ground is about quantity and quality. current science only believes in the qualities of “one” things, and expresses this as “sum of probability is one”, which is also the conceptual base for a “frame” that supposedly makes something “art”, “borders” that make people “nation”, etc. i bet this is also related to hegel’s long chapter on “measure” but i could not read it yet.
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i also think physics acts as a practical basis for all academic subjects-supposed-to-know, because they are the subjects-supposed-to-experiment: they are the ones responsible to suture scientific metaphors to “objective reality” and their grants probably function as the “fee” to account for the popular “transference” to the scientific establishment. the social invariant that is the metaphor of the “objective” invariant.
i agree that equations act something like a fetish, but this is due to their “natural language” interpretation: names like “state equation” “confusion matrix”, their naturalization in academo-scientific language efface the meaning carried by the equations themselves.
as a result, science looks too mathy, and shows itself as “too mathy”, but this is because it is not mathy enough, it does not follow the pure logic of math and raher objectifies it into rules/laws to match them with “objective reality”, to derive mathy justifications for one’s existence.
but of course, to follow math faithfully, it must be captured by natural language, but it can only be captured by an informal kind of language that loosely directs intuition, not a formal academo-language.
i think this is very similar to programmers speaking of the codes they’ve written. you can be content with jumping between vague descriptions, since the program runs on the computer. in math also, you have to do with vague descriptions, because math will carry its own logic, and best you can do is to develop intuitive conventions
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as freud says, unexpressed of content will express itself in form: for example, general ambiguousness in a dream of pregnancy may stand for the ambiguity about the child’s father.
similarly, naming of the equation also stands for academic situations: for example, “confusion matrix” not only means that it captures the confusion in some particular experiment. it also means: this is how we “objectify” our confusion in science, and leave its unexpressed remainder aside.
-- Edited by fidaner on Sunday 19th of January 2014 03:11:49 PM
After its first run of more than three months, operating a mile underground in the Black Hills of South Dakota, a new experiment named LUX has proven itself the most sensitive dark matter detector in the world.
LUX is blazing the path to illuminate the nature of dark matter, says Brown University physicist Rick Gaitskell, co-spokesperson for LUX with physicist Dan McKinsey of Yale University. LUX stands for Large Underground Xenon experiment.
Dark matter, so far observed only by its gravitational effects on galaxies and clusters of galaxies, is the predominant form of matter in the universe. Weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs so-called because they rarely interact with ordinary matter except through gravity are the leading theoretical candidates for dark matter. The mass of WIMPs is unknown, but theories and results from other experiments suggest a number of possibilities.
Objective violence is invisible since it sustains the very zero-level standard against which we perceive something as being subjective violence. Systemic violence is thus something like the notorious dark matter of physics, the counterpart to an all-too-visible subjective violence. It may be invisible, but it has to be taken into account if one is to make sense of what otherwise seem to be irrational explosions of subjective violence.
from Slavoj Zizeks introduction to Sophie Wahnichs In Defense of The Terror
i now consider studying this text www.physics.nyu.edu/%E2%80%A6/transgress_v2_singlefile.html Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity Alan D. Sokal
facebooks unbelievable arrogance and the likes twitter.com/fidaner/status/402598723391205376 cannot be excepted by supposing a scientific objectivity of traditional academy. such an arrogance can only be dealt with by developing a new & forceful scientific subjectivity by invoking self-analysis of scientific institutions through the internet and any other means.
