Social Action in Quantum Social Science
| Author | Bentley B. Allan |
| Published date | 01 September 2018 |
| Date | 01 September 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0305829818781690 |
| Subject Matter | Forum: Social Theory Going Quantum-Theoretic? Questions, Alternatives and Challenges |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829818781690
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2018, Vol. 47(1) 87 –98
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0305829818781690
journals.sagepub.com/home/mil
Social Action in Quantum
Social Science
Bentley B. Allan
Johns Hopkins University, USA
Keywords
Social theory, theories of action, quantum decision theory, contextual agents
Mots-clés
Théories sociales, Théories de l’action, Théorie quantique de la prise de décision, Agents
contextuels
Palabras clave
Teoría social, teorías de la acción, teoría de la decisión cuántica, agentes contextuales
This article reads Alexander Wendt’s Quantum Mind and Social Science as a work of
social theory. A crucial element of any social theory is its account of action or agency. I
explore Wendt’s quantum theory of social action by analysing two issues. First, Wendt
argues that the success of quantum decision theory implies that human behaviour is
quantum and therefore is likely to have been produced by a quantum brain. I interrogate
this assumption and argue that it rests on the claim that mathematical descriptions map
human and social reality in a realistic way. Second, Wendt combines quantum measure-
ment, quantum linguistics, and quantum decision theory into a contextual account of
human agency. On this image, social action arises out of connections to interwoven phe-
nomenological, social, and temporal contexts. I suggest that this account of agency is
appealing in some ways, but that social theorists have been working on a similar image
outside the physics constraint for some time. I conclude that while insights from quan-
tum social science should be an essential component of any post-classical social theory,
the task of theorising social agency should not take place exclusively under the con-
straints of quantum physics or other mathematical descriptions.
Corresponding author:
Bentley B. Allan, Johns Hopkins University, Department of Political Science, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.
Email: bentley.allan@jhu.edu
781690MIL0010.1177/0305829818781690Millennium: Journal of International StudiesAllan
research-article2018
Forum: Social Theory Going Quantum-Theoretic? Questions,
Alternatives and Challenges
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