Failures to Self-Locate: Counterfactual Ontologies in Contemporary Theatre and Physics
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Failures to Self-Locate examines the overlooked influence of quantum mechanics on the development of contemporary theatre aesthetics. Physicists began openly grappling with the ramifications of quantum theory in 1926. The same year, Bertolt Brecht announced his theatre for a scientific age as an arena for atomic man. Unsatisfied with the metaphysical implications of the first formulation of quantum mechanics, known now as the Copenhagen interpretation, physicists and philosophers of science spent the twentieth century advocating, developing, and testing alternative interpretations of the atomic realm. Throughout that same period, the Western stage witnessed a resonant series of developments on Brechts aesthetic project. Placing the interpretations of quantum mechanics in dialogue with contemporary theatre from North America and Europe, this dissertation uncovers how, after an initial point of direct contact between Brecht and physicists, physics and theatre have developed similar ontological paradigms to interpret experiments and performances respectively. \n\nIn physics, these paradigms fall into two distinct camps: those that salvage strict determinism at the expense of a singular world (collapse-free interpretations of quantum mechanics) and those that safeguard our worlds uniqueness by accepting fundamental stochasticity in reality (collapse interpretations of quantum mechanics). Experimental evidence supports both options, and so these groups must also explain the apparent validity of the other. Theatremakers actively investigated a similar ontological issue, exacerbated by Brechtian stage techniques and centred on the storied divide between reality and representation. Where the physicists navigated between determinism and locality, playwrights return to the ancient tension between fate and free will. Those crosscurrents may bring ruin to the classical protagonist, but the quantum protagonist experiences one framework (e.g., free will) while secretly being ruled by the other (e.g., determinism). So positioned, these protagonists fail to self-locate among their myriad possibilities. \n\nThis dissertation maps the resonances between the scientific quest to reconcile determinism and stochasticity and the theatrical quest to reconcile free will and fate within the quantum theoretical paradigm, by analyzing the scientific and theatrical output through the lens of counterfactual analysis.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.023 | 0.033 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.013 | 0.091 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.022 | 0.031 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.013 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.008 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".