Schrödinger's notebook: Shifting real

Abstract

Abstract The science fiction prototype featured in this article is the second chapter of a novel in progress that contains an omnibus of interventions into physics, queer science, feminism, and intellectual history. The title of the article references the notebooks of Erwin Schrodinger, a Nobel-Prize winning physicist who discovered wave theory that superseded Heisenberg's more complex form of mathematical formalism, therefore changing the way in which interpretation is done. Despite being part of a series, the prototype is written so it could be read as a standalone. The story, combined with a critical explication of its background and intent, produces the contestations illustrating the relationships between physics, the cultures in science and technology, as well as politics extending over the internal and external values of the scientific enterprise. Specifically, the differences between these values are rendered impossible through the epistemic continuity stemming from a shared ontology. At the same time, the prototype also forecasts the possibility of future technologies based on current and possible developments in physics while contesting the notion of a ‘good life’ these technologies supposedly offer. As a politically inclined epistemic move, the prototype will demonstrate points of amplification in the interactions taking place at the microscopic level for manifestation in our macroscopic space. Therefore, the amplified microscopic interactions are in competition with the observables in our ‘meatspace’ dominated by the conventions of classical physics. The prototype also acts as a speculative device for modeling probable outcomes stemming from different constraint sets, thereby acting as an ‘algorithmic’ blueprint for the narration of scenarios produced as an outcome of macro- and micro-entanglement.