West Coast History of Science Society Meeting

University of California, San Francisco

April 11th - April 14th, 2002

[Program]

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Objectivity, pluralism, and perspective:  Heisenberg between quantum mechanics and social theory

Cathy Carson
University of California, Berkeley
 

Objectivity, pluralism, and perspective: Heisenberg between quantum mechanics and social theory. The origins of quantum mechanics in the Weimar cultural milieu have occupied historians of physics since Paul Forman's famous thesis.  The trajectory of Werner Heisenberg, when followed through the 1960s, suggests a new set of concepts that can be brought to bear. These resources from German social theory direct attention not to uncertainty or indeterminacy, but to the reworking of objectivity. Between 1900 and 1970, that central notion of both epistemology and politics was reconstructed as the intersubjective coordination of ultimately irreconcilable perspectives.  From the Kaiserreich to the Federal Republic of Germany, between quantum mechanics and democratic interest group politics, Heisenberg's intellectual and political evolution tracks an increasing openness to perspectival pluralism accommodated within robust intersubjective exchange. This talk explores the uses of Weber, Mannheim, and their post-1945 heirs to characterize Heisenberg's trajectory, using the framework of his life to suggest new meanings for the reconstruction of objectivity in quantum mechanics.