Narrative Quantum Cosmology in Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen

IF 0.1 0 LITERARY THEORY & CRITICISM

American, British and Canadian Studies Pub Date : 2021-06-01 DOI:10.2478/abcsj-2021-0005

Omid Amani, Hossein Pirnajmuddin

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Abstract Twentieth-century drama has made the stage a site for reflecting on science. Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen, considered by many as one of the most striking contributions to “science plays,” portrays the elusive yet crucial short meeting of the two pillars of quantum physics, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, in the autumn of 1941. The play employs ‘real’ scientists as characters that recurrently refer to and explain their scientific ideas such as uncertainty and complementarity, recognized as the Copenhagen Interpretation. Adopting the approach of possible worlds theory, this article analyses the concept of ‘possible worlds’ as projected in Copenhagen in light of the idea that physics itself has proposed a proliferation of parallel universes (multiverse). In fact, our main thesis is that the play offers an alternate history and brings about a myriad of counterfactuals that are tested as “drafts.”

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Michael Frayn的《哥本哈根》中的叙事量子宇宙论

20世纪的戏剧使舞台成为反思科学的场所。迈克尔·弗莱恩(Michael Frayn)的《哥本哈根》(Copenhagen)被许多人认为是对“科学戏剧”最引人注目的贡献之一，它描绘了1941年秋天，量子物理学的两大支柱尼尔斯·玻尔(Niels Bohr)和维尔纳·海森堡(Werner Heisenberg)难以捉摸却至关重要的短暂会面。该剧采用“真正的”科学家作为角色，反复提及并解释他们的科学思想，如不确定性和互补性，被称为哥本哈根诠释。本文采用可能世界理论的方法，根据物理学本身提出的平行宇宙(多元宇宙)扩散的观点，分析了哥本哈根会议提出的“可能世界”的概念。事实上，我们的主要论点是，这部剧提供了另一种历史，并带来了无数的反事实，这些反事实被测试为“草稿”。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

American, British and Canadian Studies Arts and Humanities-Literature and Literary Theory

CiteScore

0.20

自引率

0.00%

发文量

审稿时长

10 weeks

期刊介绍： Founded in 1999, American, British and Canadian Studies, the journal of the Academic Anglophone Society of Romania, is currently published by Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. Re-launched in refashioned, biannual format, American, British and Canadian Studies is an international, peer-reviewed journal that sets out to explore disciplinary developments in Anglophone Studies in the changing environment forged by the intersections of culture, technology and electronic information. Our primary goal is to bring together in productive dialogue scholars conducting advanced research in the theoretical humanities. As well as offering innovative approaches to influential crosscurrents in contemporary thinking, the journal seeks to contribute fresh angles to the academic subject of English and promote shape-changing research across conventional boundaries. By virtue of its dynamic and varied profile and of the intercultural dialogue that it caters for, ABC Studies aims to fill a gap in the Romanian academic arena, and function as the first publication to approach Anglophone studies in a multi-disciplinary perspective. Within the proposed range of diversity, our major scope is to provide close examinations and lucid analyses of the role and future of the academic institutions at the cutting edge of high-tech. With this end in view, we especially invite contributions in the fields of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, Postcolonial Theory, Area Studies, Cultural Anthropology, Language and Linguistics, Multimedia and Digital Arts, Translation Studies and related subjects. With its wide subject range, American, British and Canadian Studies aims to become one of the academic community’s premium scholarly resources.