On 2 October, Karen O’Brien, Alexander Wendt, Ann El Khoury and others led a webinar called “Shifting Paradigms: The Potential for Quantum Social Change.” This 90-minute discussion examined the questions: What role do paradigms play in limiting or accelerating rapid social change? How can alternative paradigms influence research and practice?

1. SHIFTING PARADIGMS: THE POTENTIAL
FOR QUANTUM SOCIAL CHANGE
Webinar
October 2, 2017

3. Webinar Agenda
Introduction: Is it time for a quantum leap? (Karen O’Brien,
University of Oslo)
The Politics of Ontology: Resistance to Quantum,
Quantum as Resistance (Alexander Wendt, Ohio State
University)
Applying Quantum Ways of Knowing and Doing: Kerala
and Alternative Development Pathways (Ann El Khoury,
Maquarie University)
Reflections from Leonardo Orlando (Sciences Po); Chad
Monfreda (Princeton University), and Ananka Loubser
(North-West University, South Africa) (15 minutes)
Responses from Alexander Wendt and Ann El Khoury

4. INTRODUCTION:
IS IT TIME FOR A QUANTUM LEAP?
Karen O’Brien
Professor
Department of Sociology and Human Geography
University of Oslo, Norway
karen.obrien@sosgeo.uio.no

5. Figueres, Christiana, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Gail Whiteman, J. Rockström, Anthony Hobley, and Stefan Rahmstorf. 2017. “Three Years to
Safeguard Our Climate.” Nature 546 (7660): 593–595.

7. http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/wp-content/uploads/Raworth-donut.png

9. Climate Change: The classical paradigm
• Humans are completely material
• Mental states are nothing but brain states (consciousness
is an illusion or epiphenomenal)
• Humans are individual, i.e. biologically and mentally
separate (subject-object dualism, nature as separate)
• No role for experience, meaning, or purpose (these
depend on consciousness)
• No free will (choice is an illusion)
• Humans as machines or zombies (determinism)
What if these assumptions are wrong?

10. “Quantum mechanics forced
physicists to reshape their ideas of
reality, to rethink the nature of
things at the deepest level, and to
revise their concepts of position
and speed, as well as their notions
of cause and effect.” (Kleppner and
Jackiw, 2000)
Kleppner and Jackiw (2009) One Hundred Years of Quantum Physics ,Science 289: 893-898
https://djx5h8pabpett.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/12/shutterstock_262451246.jpg

11. “If human beings really are quantum,
then classical social science is
essentially founded on a mistake, and
social life will therefore require a
quantum framework for its proper
understanding.” (Wendt 2015, p. 16)
Wendt, A. 2015. Quantum Mind and Social Science.
Cambridge University Press
http://news.mit.edu/2015/thousands-atoms-entangled-single-photon-0325

12. “Quantum theory … has informed a newly
probabilistic social science where reality and
the representation of reality (or its performance
and construction) incorporate potentiality, not
simply actuality. (El Khoury 2015, p. 207)
El Khoury, Ann. 2015. Globalization Development and Social Justice: A Propositional Political
Approach. 1 edition. New York, NY: Routledge.

13. ‘In this book I explore the possibility that this
foundational assumption of social science is a
mistake, by re-reading social science «through
the quantum.’ More specificaly, I argue that
human beings and therefore social life exhibit
quantum coherence – in effect, that we are
walking wave functions. (Wendt 2015, p. 3)
Wendt, A. 2015. Quantum Mind and Social Science. Cambridge University Press