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6:22

(In »Irreducible multiplicity – syntheism as a process religion«)

The great quantum physicists have parted from the classical physicists of the older generation precisely through their ability to go straight to the big picture of what they are studying, and also keep the big picture – conceptually and empirically – in focus all the way through their study, without getting stuck on trying to isolate the components. It is not the difficulties connected with measuring objects within quantum physics – which for example Heisenberg maintains with the epistemic uncertainty principle – that is the most important lesson. No, the really revolutionary lesson – for which Bohr finds inspiration in Whitehead and then formulates it as the ontic indeterminacy principle – is to understand that it is the relations, not the objects within the phenomena that give them their substance and that therefore must be regarded as primary in existence. This in turn has far-reaching consequences for all the emergences that are based on the underlying quantum physical reality. For example, French philosopher Bruno Latour formulates a pioneering actor-network theory for the social sciences in the 1980s – which among other things presupposes a radical equality between what were previously superior humans and subordinate technological complexes in their surroundings – based on the insight that everything constantly acts performatively in relation to everything else in existence, that is, everything is fundamentally interconnected and influences everything else, everywhere and always. This is quite simply what the quantum physical world looks like, and thus, argues Latour, the higher levels in the hierarchy – first classical physics and then the social arena – must also be subordinate to this conception of reality.