Abstract

The ambition of this book is a noble one: to provide a counter to the assumption, taken for granted made by many postmodernists, that quantum mechanics lends support to the view that scienti® c realism is nothing more than an outmoded fad. It is especially gratifying that this book comes from a literary theorist, author of a well-respected book on Derrida (Norris, 1987), who, by his own admission, has ª previously published several books on literary theory that might be construed ¼ as going along with the emergent trend towards anti-realism and cultural relativism in various quarters of `advanced’ theoretical debateº (Introduction, p. 1). One wishes, however, that Norris had taken more time to familiarize himself with issues that he writes about, and that he had taken more care in constructing his arguments. Although ª there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentanceº (Luke 15: 7, RSV), we should not let jubilation blind us to the book’ s shortcomings. Among these is a lack of clarity in its central notion, that of realism. Early on, Norris quotes with approval William Alston’ s characterization of the alethic conception of realism, which is the conception advocated by Norris; the alethic conception ª implies that (almost always) what confers a truth-value on a statement is something independent of the cognitive-linguistic goings-on that issued in that statement, including any epistemic status of those goings-onº (p. 41). As the book progresses, however, additional conditions on what is to count as a realist interpretation of quantum mechanics emerge. Realism apparently becomes synonymous with ª causal-explanatoryº theories, and in one passage, Norris goes so far as to suggest that realism entails a commitment to synthetic a priori knowledge of the physical world: Bell’ s calculations and those applied in interpreting the Aspect results are themselves dependentÐ no less than EPRÐ on a range of distinctly ª classicalº assumptions, among them the existence of a physical object-domain which, however puzzling its details, permits such experiments to be carried out and conclusions to be drawn from them..