p.4 uncertainty is an inherent feature of human thinking
p.23 Or perhaps it is less that there is an assemblage of agents than there is an entangled state of agencies.
p.33 As I argue in chapter 3, the primary ontological unit is not independent
objects with independently determinate boundaries and properties but rather what Bohr terms "phenomena."... phenomena
are the ontological inseparability of agentially intra-acting components... phenomena are... basic units of reality.
p.33 the notion of intra-action recognizes that distinct agencies do not precede, but rather emerge through,
their intra-action. It is important to note that the "distinct" agencies are only distinct in a relational, not an absolute,
sense, that is, agencies are only distinct in relation to their mutual entanglement; they don't exist as individual elements.
p.37 Realism, then, is not about
representations of an independent reality but about the real consequences, interventions, creative possibilities,
and responsibilities of intra-acting within and as part of the world.
p.41 That which exists is that which we can use to intervene
in the world to affect something else
p.41 Essence thus becomes the trajectory of stabilization
within this geometry that is meant to characterize the variable ontologies of quasi-objects.
p.90-91 According to agential realism, knowing, thinking, measuring,
theorizing, and observing are material practices of intra-acting within and as part of the world. What do we learn
by engaging in such practices? ...we learn about phenomena - about specific material configurations of the
world's becoming.
p.118 For Bohr, the real issue is one of indeterminacy, not uncertainty... we can't know something
definite about something for which there is nothing to know
p.120 a condition for objective knowledge is that the referent is a phenomenon
(and not an observation-independent object).
p.127 the term "physical reality" can properly be attached to phenomena.
p.127 the measurement apparatus is the condition of possibility for determinate meaning for the concept
in question
p.128 Since individually determinate entities do not exist, measurements do not entail an interaction
between separate entities; rather, determinate entities emerge from their intra-action. I introduce the term "intra-action"
in recognition of their ontological inseparability, in contrast to the usual "interaction," which relies on... the prior existence
of separately determinate entities. A phenomenon is a specific intra-action of an "object" and the "measuring agencies";
the object and the measuring agencies emerge from, rather than precede, the intra-action that produces them. Crucially, then,
we should understand phenomena not as objects-in-themselves, or as perceived objects... but as specific intra-actions.
p.139 As I argued in chapter 3, the primary ontological unit is not independent
objects with inherent boundaries and properties but rather phenomena... phenomena are the ontological inseparability/entanglement
of intra-acting "agencies."
p.140 Phenomena are constitutive of reality. Reality is composed
not of things-in-themselves or things-behind-phenomena but of things-in-phenomena. The world is a dynamic
process of intra-activity and materialization in the enactment of determinate causal structures
p.141 the primary ontological units are not "things" but phenomena - dynamic
topological reconfigurings/entanglements/relationalities/(re)articulations of the world... Agency is not an attribute
but the ongoing reconfigurings of the world. The universe is agential intra-activity in its becoming. [Seth Lloyd
thinks that the universe is a quantum computer that computes itself. Go figure.]
p.148 apparatuses are the material conditions of possibility and impossibility
of mattering... apparatuses are boundary-making practices.
p.149 Knowing is not about seeing from above or outside or even seeing from
a prosthetically enhanced human body. Knowing is a matter of intra-acting. Knowing entails specific practices through
which the world is differentially articulated and accounted for. In some instances, "nonhumans" (even beings without
brains) emerge as partaking in the world's active engagement in practices of knowing.
p.154-155 Bohr addresses the question of the boundary between subject and object directly...
He explains complementarity by considering two mutually exclusive ways for a person in a dark room to
usefully intra-act with a stick or cane: one possibility is for the person to use the stick to negotiate his way around
the room by holding the stick firmly in his hands, in which case the stick is properly understood to be part of the
"subject," or he can instead choose to hold the stick loosely to sense its features, in which case the stick
is the "object" of observation... The stick cannot usefully serve as an instrument of observation if one is intent on observing
it.
p.170 Matter is a dynamic intra-active becoming that never sits
still - an ongoing reconfiguring that exceeds any linear conception of dynamics in which effect
follows cause end-on-end, and in which the global is a straightforward emanation outward of the local.
p.232 Apparatuses are not mere instruments serving as a system of lenses
that magnify and focus our attention on the object world, rather they are laborers that help constitute and are an integral
part of the phenomena being investigated. Furthermore, apparatuses do not simply detect differences that are already in place;
rather they contribute to the production and reconfiguring of difference. The failure to take proper account of the role of
apparatuses in the production of phenomena seriously compromises the objectivity of the investigation.
p.235 agency is a matter of intra-acting... Agency is doing/being in its intra-activity. It is the entanglement
of iterative changes to particular practices - iterative reconfigurings... of spacetimematter relations - through the dynamics
of intra-activity.
p.340 In summary, "measurements" are causal intra-actions.
They are not mere laboratory contrivances that depend on human beings for their configuration and operation... "Observer"
and "observed" are nothing more than two physical systems intra-acting in the marking of the "effect" by the "cause"; no human
observers are required (though "humans" may emerge as being part of practices). And objectivity is not defined in
reference to a human observer... the objective referent of measured values is phenomena... Objectivity, then, is about being
accountable and responsible to what is real.
p.367 "Biomimicry says: if it can't be found in nature, there is probably
a good reason for its absence. It may have been tried, and long-ago edited out of the population. Natural selection is wisdom
in action."
