Quantum mechanics is certainly a strange place to
start an investigation into the nature of the relationship
between science and society. However, this article
begins by integrating its history and proceeds through
current conceptions of it by some physicists to examine
quantum mechanics as an intersection of both science
and knowledge. A famous thought experiment by Einstein,
Podolsky, and Rosen pointed to an area that few
physicists still research¿a paradigm gone awry. Yet the
vast majority of physiciststoday do not agonize over
this uncertainty. Physics today presses forward with
indominable speed and precision. But by questioning a
small sample of physicists doing physics about their
practice, this study aims at an everyday physicist¿s understanding
of the matter; a paradox that lies between
the results of experiment and their interpretation or
place as knowledge in society. For Einstein, Podolsky,
and Rosen, the paradox was that we can only determine
the spin of an entangled particle¿it only becomes
real¿after measuring the spin of its partner particle.
For a few contemporary physicists, the problem is how |