Entanglement


Book Description

Winner of the Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing 2017 Journeying around the globe, through past and present, Emma Tarlo unravels the intriguing story of human hair and what it tells us about ourselves and society. When it’s not attached to your head, your very own hair takes on a disconcerting quality. Suddenly, it is strange. And yet hair finds its way into all manner of unexpected places, far from our heads, including cosmetics, clothes, ropes, personal and public collections, and even food. Whether treated as waste or as gift, relic, sacred offering or product in a billion-dollar industry for wigs and hair extensions, hair has many stories to tell. Collected from Hindu temples and Buddhist nunneries and salvaged by the strand from waste heaps and the combs of long-haired women, hair flows into the industry from many sources. Entering this strange world, Emma Tarlo tracks hair’s movement across India, Myanmar, China, Africa, the United States, Britain and Europe, meeting people whose livelihoods depend on this singular commodity. Whether its journey ends in an Afro hair fair, a Jewish wig parlour, fashion salon or hair loss clinic, hair is oddly revealing of the lives it touches.




A Song of Entanglement


Book Description

How can two individuals connect when they are separated by worlds? Hala's father disappeared when she was eight years old. Nine years later, she sets a plan in motion to die. The one thing she needs to complete first, however, is complete her compositional memoir. Her compositions are written from the deepest parts of her, but little does she know that they are found in another world and played, bringing the two worlds and individuals together. Through a connection that can only come once in a lifetime, time and space become nothing. As the two meet, strange things begin occurring. Most of all, however, they find where Hala's father has been trapped this whole time. As Hala finds herself trapped between worlds, she must travel within the darkest parts of herself in order to be freed.




Quantum Entanglement


Book Description

A concise, non-technical exploration of quantum entanglement—the enigma Albert Einstein called ‘spooky action at a distance’—and how it contradicts our assumptions about the ultimate nature of reality. Quantum physics is notable for its brazen defiance of common sense. (Think of Schrödinger's Cat, famously both dead and alive.) An especially rigorous form of quantum contradiction occurs in experiments with entangled particles. Our common assumption is that objects have properties whether or not anyone is observing them, and the measurement of one can’t affect the other. Quantum entanglement—called by Einstein “spooky action at a distance”—rejects this assumption, offering impeccable reasoning and irrefutable evidence of the opposite. Is quantum entanglement mystical, or just mystifying? In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Jed Brody equips readers to decide for themselves. He explains how our commonsense assumptions impose constraints—from which entangled particles break free. Brody explores such concepts as local realism, Bell’s inequality, polarization, time dilation, and special relativity. He introduces readers to imaginary physicists Alice and Bob and their photon analyses; points out that it's easier to reject falsehood than establish the truth; and reports that some physicists explain entanglement by arguing that we live in a cross-section of a higher-dimensional reality. He examines a variety of viewpoints held by physicists, including quantum decoherence, Niels Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation, genuine fortuitousness, and QBism. This relatively recent interpretation, an abbreviation of “quantum Bayesianism,” holds that there's no such thing as an absolutely accurate, objective probability “out there,” that quantum mechanical probabilities are subjective judgments, and there's no “action at a distance,” spooky or otherwise.




Entangled Minds


Book Description

Is everything connected? Can we sense what's happening to loved ones thousands of miles away? Why are we sometimes certain of a caller's identity the instant the phone rings? Do intuitive hunches contain information about future events? Is it possible to perceive without the use of the ordinary senses? Many people believe that "psychic phenomena" are rare talents or divine gifts. Others don't believe they exist at all. But the latest scientific research shows that these phenomena are both real and widespread, and are an unavoidable consequence of the interconnected, entangled physical reality we live in. Albert Einstein called entanglement "spooky action at a distance"—the way two objects remain connected through time and space, without communicating in any conventional way, long after their initial interaction has taken place. Could a similar entanglement of minds explain our apparent psychic abilities? Dean Radin, senior scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, believes it might. In this illuminating book, Radin shows how we know that psychic phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis are real, based on scientific evidence from thousands of controlled lab tests. Radin surveys the origins of this research and explores, among many topics, the collective premonitions of 9/11. He reveals the physical reality behind our uncanny telepathic experiences and intuitive hunches, and he debunks the skeptical myths surrounding them. Entangled Minds sets the stage for a rational, scientific understanding of psychic experience.




Lost and Wanted


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: VOGUE • FRESH AIR As a professor of physics at MIT, Helen Clapp disdains notions of the supernatural in favor of rational thought and proven ideas. So it’s perhaps especially vexing when, on an otherwise unremarkable Wednesday in June, she gets a phone call from a friend who has just died. That friend was Charlotte Boyce, Helen’s roommate at Harvard. The two women once confided in each other about everything: Helen’s struggles as a young woman in science, Charlie’s as a black screenwriter in Hollywood, their shared challenges as parents. But as the years passed, they gradually grew apart. And now Charlie is permanently, tragically gone. Drawn back into her friend’s orbit, Helen is forced to question the laws of the universe that have always steadied her mind and heart. Suspenseful, perceptive, deeply affecting, Lost and Wanted is a story of friends and lovers, lost and found, at the most defining moments of their lives.




Quantum Superposition


Book Description

A clear and engaging discussion Written by a highly respected quantum physicist Puzzling phenomena made comprehensible Describes solutions to challenging quandries in physics




Human Entanglement Theory


Book Description




Entangled


Book Description

A powerful and innovative argument that explores the complexity of the human relationship with material things, demonstrating how humans and societies are entrapped into the maintenance and sustaining of material worlds Argues that the interrelationship of humans and things is a defining characteristic of human history and culture Offers a nuanced argument that values the physical processes of things without succumbing to materialism Discusses historical and modern examples, using evolutionary theory to show how long-standing entanglements are irreversible and increase in scale and complexity over time Integrates aspects of a diverse array of contemporary theories in archaeology and related natural and biological sciences Provides a critical review of many of the key contemporary perspectives from materiality, material culture studies and phenomenology to evolutionary theory, behavioral archaeology, cognitive archaeology, human behavioral ecology, Actor Network Theory and complexity theory




Entangled Empathy


Book Description

In Entangled Empathy, scholar and activist Lori Gruen argues that rather than focusing on animal “rights,” we ought to work to make our relationships with animals right by empathetically responding to their needs, interests, desires, vulnerabilities, hopes, and unique perspectives. Pointing out that we are already entangled in complex and life-altering relationships with other animals, Gruen guides readers through a new way of thinking about—and practicing—animal ethics. Gruen describes entangled empathy as a type of caring perception focused on attending to another’s experience of well-being. It is an experiential process involving a blend of emotion and cognition in which we recognize we are in relationships with others and are called upon to be responsive and responsible in these relationships by attending to another. When we engage in entangled empathy we are transformed and in that transformation we can imagine less violent, more meaningful ways of being together.




Figures of Entanglement


Book Description

Recent and ongoing "new materialisms" scholarship seeks to fundamentally reshape the humanities and their relationship with the sciences. While this work comprises multiple and varied currents, one of the most important, yet whose distinctive merits are arguably often underappreciated, is that influenced by the theoretical physicist and feminist philosopher Karen Barad. The first volume devoted to bringing Barad’s work into conversation with the disciplines of rhetoric and communication studies, this collection organizes that conversation primarily around her notion of "entanglement", which encourages an understanding of meaning as inherently performative, material, and ecological. In doing so, the essays in this collection variously approach rhetoric as a "figure of entanglement" in ways that contribute to and enrich both rhetoric and Barad’s theorizing. Topics range from politics to breast cancer, genealogy, the trope of academic "turns," Marx’s notion of exchange, and the "prehistoric" emergence of human consciousness. With a new foreword by the editors and afterword by Laurie E. Gries, this collection is otherwise reprinted from the 2016 "Figures of Entanglement" special issue of the journal Review of Communication.