Document Type
Article
Abstract
[First paragraph]
When philosopher of history and science Michel Serres wrote of "that rare and narrow passage" between the human sciences and the exact sciences [1], he intended to suggest not only the infrequency and difficulty of such contact, but also the unwillingness on either side to engage in what could be a dangerous, low-profit venture. It seems a long haul back to our common origins in philosophia, and typically, efforts to regain common ground between the disciplines have approached the problem as a one-sided move from the exact sciences to the study of the humanities. Notable exceptions such as N. Katherine Hayles' Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science (1990) do attempt to create the atmosphere of dialog; yet, while Hayles discusses how "Different disciplines are drawn to similar problems because the concerns underlying them are highly charged within a prevailing cultural context" [2] her text still operates largely as a science-based approach to the study of cultural texts. Those in the humanities may agree to the applicability of complex dynamics and field theory to the study of culture, but the inverse is not typically true. For example, while we find Hayles' application of scientific theory to culture "interesting" or even "enlightening," works such as Donna J. Haraway's Simians, Cyborgs and Women (1991) are deemed "intrusive" and are largely ignored by the scientific community. Practical applications of scientific theories to specific works in the humanities may be useful, but in essence, these projects either simply advocate or court the sciences and rarely seek common parallels in theory or practice which are mutually supporting and enlightening. We need to look again at what we have always had in common, at something which prefigures even philosophia: the means of observation.
Repository Citation
Smith, C. J.. "The Observing Body: Quantum Mechanics, the Anthropic Principles, and Panopticism." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 2, no. 1, 2002, pp. 1–16. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol2/iss1/17