CHAPTER 2 A Feminist Approach to Teaching Quantum Physics Karen Barad On the other hand, I think I can safely say that nobody understands quan­ tum mechanics. So do not take the lecture too seriously, feeling that you really have to understand in terms of some model what I am going to describe, but just relax and enjoy it. I am going to tell you what nature behaves like. If you simply admit that maybe she does behave like this, you will findher a de­ lightful, entrancing thing. Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possi­ bly avoid it, "But how can it be like that?" Because you will get "down the drain," into a blind alley from which nobody has escaped. (Feynman, 1965, p. 129) And Von Neumann gave me an interesting idea; that you don't have to be responsible for the world that you're in. So I have developed a very power­ ful sense of social irresponsibility.... It's made me a very happy man ever since. -Feynman speaking of advice given to him by the mathematician John von Neumann while they were working together at Los Alamos on the atomic bomb (Schweber, 1986, p. 467) In the physics community, Richard Feynman is a hero. In different ways, the quotes above speak of a yearning for innocence, a boyish play­ fulness that won't quit even in the face of life's most serious moments. Feynman, the self-proclaimed enfant terrible, portrayed himself as a fun­ loving kind of guy, thumbing his nose at responsibility and taking advan­ tage of every opportunity to persuade Nature herself to yield to his charms. Richard Feynman was not your stereotypical physicist. He was the non­ quiche-eating real man of the physics community: a kind of James Dean, John Wayne, and John Travolta hybrid. His rebel-without-a-cause, rugged­ individual, cool-and-unpretentious-New Yorker-womanizing personality stood in stark contrast to the asexual, nerdy, last-pick-for-the-ball-team stereotype. Central to his personality was a need to impress others with 43 44 Physics and Engineering his cleverness. But underneath it all, he cared deeply about understand­ ing quantum mechanics, if not the fate of the world. My purpose here is not to speculate about, psychologize, or debate the nuances of Feynman's personality.Myinterest is not in Feynman the man but in Feynman as a symbol of the dominant culture of U.S. post-Sputnik physics. In particular, I think it is important to ask why Feynman is a hero of inordinate proportions. That is, what, aside fromgenius, makes Feynman a superhero in the eyes of the contemporary physics community? Which aspects of the Feynman legacy have been appropriated and integrated into the culture of U.S. physics, and which have not? How is this culture per­ petuated in the classroom, and what does it mean for students? "Whatever else Dick Feynman may have joked about, his love for physics approached reverence" (L. Brown, cited in Lubkin, 1989, p. 23). Anyone who has watched the "Nova" interview, "The Pleasure of Find­ ing Things Out," will testifyto the sheer delight this remarkable scientist found indoing physics. His energy, enthusiasm, and love for physics have endeared him to students and colleagues alike. Dick Feynman epitomized the "Physics is Phun" pedagogical approach of post-Sputnik science in the United States-what I like to call the "Boys Just Wanna Have Fu-un" (a gender�reversed appropriation of Cyndi Lauper' shit tune) approach. This approach may have worked well for the particular purposes the physics community had in mind in the period immediately following the success of Sputnik, but its flawshave been more than evident in the post-Challenger period in which we now live. The contrast between the 1950s Sputnik suc­ cess and the 1980s Challenger disaster serves as an interesting metaphor for what can happen when pedagogy becomes inflexible in the face of rapidly changing demographics.1 For more than two decades, feminist science studies scholars have been offering increasingly complex and sophisticated accounts of the role of gender, race, sexuality, and class ideologies in the production of scientific knowledge. As testimony to the depth and effectiveness of these critiques, it is important to note that feminist studies of biology and primatology have already led to marked changes in the actual content of these natural sci­ ences (see, e.g., Bleier, 1984; Fausto-Sterling, 1985, 1987; Haraway, 1986, 1989; Hrdy, 1986; Hubbard, 1990; Longino & Doell, 1983). However, few analyses have focused on the physical sciences. Does the scientific method simply "work better" when the subject matter is the physical world rather than the biological or social ones, or are the issues simply less obvious? It would be ironic to find that the physical sciences, those sciences that have traditionally been most exclusive of women and people of color, are un­ marked by the politics of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and other critical social variables. Feminist Approach to Teaching Quantum Physics 45 The analysis I present in this chapter relies on a feminist reading of Niels Bohr's philosophy of physics, the details of which I present in a com­ panion paper focusing largely on the epistemological issues (see Barad, in press). This chapter focuses on pedagogical issues, outlining an alterna­ tive to the "you don't have to be responsible," "just relax and enjoy it," "Physics is Phun" approach to teaching. Recognizing the diverse popula­ tion of students that will become future scientists and their serious con­ cerns about the complex world for which they must share responsibility, we must clearly try different approaches. Although there are models avail­ able to reform introductory science courses, most of these approaches leave the remainder of the curriculumintact. The entirecurriculum must be trans­ formed; it is not sufficientto put all our efforts into the introductory courses and then go on with business as usual. I therefore use an advanced phys­ ics course for junior and senior majors as an example here. Although a course on quantum physics relies on a certain level of mathematical sophistication, I have tried to make the ideas presented here accessible to the uninitiated. I hope that this example will inspire a multitude of other efforts needed to transform entire science curricula. NEWfONIAN FRAMEWORK: REFLECTIONS ON MIRRORING THEORIES It was quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the "merely per­ sonal," from an existence which is dominated by wishes, hopes and primi­ tive feelings. Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists indepen­ dently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The con­ templation of this world beckoned like a liberation, and I soon noticed that many a man whom I had learned to esteem and to admire had found inner freedom and security in devoted occupation with it. The mental grasp of this extrapersonal world within the frame of the given possibilities swam before my mind's eye. -Albert Einstein speaking of choosing a career in physics (Schilpp, 1970, p. 5) When someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing. -Adrienne Rich, from her essay "Invisibility in Academe" (Rich, 1986, p. 198) There is more to sparking student interest in physics than warming the "chilly climate'.'. of science classrooms. Contemporary physics curricula 46 Physics and Engineering in the United States reflect what Traweek (1988) calls" an extreme culture of objectivity: a culture of no culture, which longs passionately for a world without loose ends, without temperament, gender, nationalism, or other sources of disorder-for a world outside human space and time" (p. 162). Newtonian physics is consonant with such a vision of the world. The Newtonian worldview is compatiblewith an objectivist epistemol­ ogy, in which the well-prepared mind is able to produce a privileged mental mirroring of the world as it exists independently of us human beings (see Rorty, 1979). That is, what is "discovered" is presumed to be unmarked by its"discoverer." The claim is that the scientist can read the universal equa­ tions of nature that are inscribed on G-d' s blackboard: Nature has spoken. Paradoxically, the objects being studied are given all the agency, even and most especially when they are seen as passive, inert objects moving aim­ lessly in the void. That is, these cultureless agents, existingoutside of human space-time, are thought to reveal their secrets to patient observers watch­ ing and listening through benignly obtrusive instruments. Notice that agency is not attributed to human beings; once all subjective contaminants have been removed by the scientific method, scientists simply collect the pure distillate of truth.2 The Newtonian worldview is still so much a part of contemporary physics culture that it infects the teaching of post-Newtonian physics as well. That is, the stakes are so high in maintaining the mirroring view of scientific knowledge that quantum physics is presented as mysticism. Take the example of a photon being emitted from a light source. Students are told that according to quantum mechanics, the photon does not have a polarization until it is measured. This goes against classical intuition, since it seems that the polarization that is measured must be the one the photon had when it was emitted. The curious student wants to know how it can possibly be otherwise: How can the photon have traveled through space without a polarization? The physics professor smiles one of those smiles and "explains": "That's just the way it is.