Frayn’s Play and Barad’s Interpretations
“Another crucial point that I have yet to discuss is the fact that Frayn continually confuses the epistemological and ontological issues — issues concerning the nature of knowledge and the nature of being.” — Barad, page 18
To discuss about Barad’s interpretation on Michael Frayn in this quote, one must understand epistemology, onto logy, and ethics in a context outside of Barad’s definitions and Michael Frayn’s play, Copenhagen.
- What is epistemology? Epistemology is the study of human knowledge and reasoning such as the limits, methods, and validity.
- What is ontology? Ontology is the study of concepts behind existence and helps the understanding of how and why things exist or not
- What is ethics? Ethics is the discipline of moral principles and accounts for what makes things morally right or morally wrong.
Now, we must discuss about the play. Frayn’s Copenhagen is a play that is based off of an event in Copenhagen during World War II. In this play, both remarkable European physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg were seen to have a very close relationship and discuss their ideas. Bohr’s wife, Margrethe Bohr starts off the play by asking, “[w]hy did he come to Copenhagen?” (Frayn, 4). Margrethe was referring to why Heisenberg was visiting Niels in Copenhagen in 1941 when it could have led to troubles for Heisenberg such as execution. However, there was not a definitive answer, and the play continues the dialogue between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. With their conversations, Frayn intended the characters to discuss intentions in the scientific realm, however the translation to his audience was off and uncertain. Frayn used his characters to manipulate the perspectives of his audience to examine a complicated mix of epistemology and ontology.
Barad scrutinizes Michael Frayn and how Frayn had an inability to discuss epistemological and ontological issues and intermixes both concepts during the discussion of quantum physics in Copenhagen. Frayn attempted three times to observe possible scenarios that could have happened between the three characters that appeared in the play by drawing analogies with Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Barad notes that the Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle says “there is a necessary limit to what we can simultaneously know about certain pairs of physical quantities, such as the position and momentum of a particle” (6). Frayn was suggesting that analogy has a limit to what we can know about thoughts, intentions, and motivations. Barad immediately points out, “[b]ut if the goal is to set up an uncertainty principle for people in analogy with the famous one that Heisenberg proposes for particles, and one is committed to doing so with some care, then it does not follow that ‘we can’t have any knowledge of other people’s motives’” (6). Barad criticizes Frayn’s take and wanted to “tidy” Frayn’s analogy because of the evident intermixing of epistemology, ontology, and ethics. For one to say that knowledge of motivations is not prohibited but limited results in our critical thinking of moral judgement. She suggests that Frayn should have stated that we can’t be fully certain about a person’s actions and what motivated them to do those actions.
References
- Introduction (p. 3–25) from Barad, K. (2006). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke University Press.
- Copenhagen. (2002). BBC Worldwide Learning. https://fod-infobase-com.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/p_ViewVideo.aspx?xtid=128838
