What Is Real? by Giorgio Agamben
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Life Imitating Science

Quantum physics forced the recognition of something that had always been the case but had been ignored by both scientists and philosophers of science: Metrics are never a property of the event or thing being measured. Or to put the matter more generally: mathematics is not analogous to what is the case in the world.

This unexpected (and disconcerting ) conclusion is obvious in quantum physics because the probabilistic character of quantum events can only be analysed within an imaginary world of chance. The mathematics of chance cannot be analogous to reality because:

“the one who calculates probability relies on risk without actually taking a risk, that is to say, he leaves reality and at the same time transforms chance—l’hasard—into a principle allowing him to decide on reality. This means that probability is never punctually realized as such, nor does it concern a single real event, but... it allows us to intervene in reality, as considered from a special perspective, in order to govern it.”

This idea of governing reality by measuring it, that is, imposing an order on it that is not inherent, was an insight formulated by the Italian physicist, Ettore Majorana, in the 1930’s. He recognised it as a fundamental implication of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, and of the research results of Planck and Fermi among others. If his insight was correct, what had been considered ‘scientific’ in the past was no longer possible to conceive as such. All measurement, not just measurement of the very small, was an ‘intervention’ in reality in order to command a response. That response typically showed up as a position on a metric provided by the scientist. The event or thing measured had no intrinsic properties; but it became a property of the metric through the process of measurement.

Reality does have a defence against such intrusive interference - it disappears; it refuses to respond. That is, the event or thing may leave its mark on the metric employed, but its existential reality escapes further scientific scrutiny. It is unclear whether reality is destroyed through measurement or simply evades discovery. This is a central poetic mystery of quantum physics. But it is also the reason psych-tests can’t identify incipient mass killers, democratic elections are unpredictable, and no one has ever seen dark matter. Reality is beyond the reach of language, and therefore measurement.

It is also a central mystery of the fate of Ettore Majorana, who, after sending various cryptic messages to friends and family members in 1938, disappeared without a trace. Whether he committed suicide or fled to an isolated monastic existence is an issue that can only be resolved probabilistically based on the available evidence. But it is clear that Majorana succeeded in ‘commanding’ his own immunity from further observation and therefore measurement.
Agamben’s view is that Majorana, for his own hidden reasons, was demonstrating the reality of a quantum world by acting it out in his own life:

“... if quantum mechanics relies on the convention that reality must be eclipsed by probability, then disappearance is the only way in which the real can peremptorily be affirmed as such and avoid the grasp of calculation. Majorana turned his very person into the exemplary cipher of the status of the real in the probabilistic universe of contemporary physics, and produced in this way an event that is at the same time absolutely real and absolutely improbable.”

In short, whatever reality is, it is not to be found through science. A rather profound point in such a brief philosophical anecdote, and an even more profound way to pursue one’s life in science.

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