Friends,
A quick footnote on research — Helen Pritchard's post to the list introduced me to a researcher (and a research approach) hitherto unknown to me. This is Karen Barad, a physicist who is now Professor of Feminist Studies, Philosophy, and History of Consciousness at the University of California at Santa Cruz. I followed Helen's notes to order Barad's remarkable book, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning.
Looking a bit further, I discovered her web site. You can download some of her articles here:
http://feministstudies.ucsc.edu/faculty/singleton.php?&singleton=true&cruz_id=kbarad
And on her page at Academia.edu:
http://ucsc.academia.edu/KarenBarad
This work demonstrates clear thought, effective theory construction, and beautiful writing.
There is a link on Barad's UCSC faculty page to an article that is especially relevant to the conversation on the relationship between knowing and not knowing in research: "Erasers and Erasures: Pinch's Unfortunate 'Uncertainty Principle'," in Social Studies of Science, vol. 41, no. 3, Spring 2011. Responding to a critique of her book Meeting the Universe Halfway, Barad explains how (and why) we must know a great deal, and keep much of it in mind, if we are to engage in research across the interdisciplinary fields that matter today.
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61 404 830 462 | Home Page http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/people/Professor-Ken-Friedman-ID22.html
Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China
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