Sublime, Quantum Strange-ness, and Who Thinks About It

How they intersect (concise):

• Epistemic limit: Quantum theory exposes limits of classical representation and intuition (indeterminacy, nonlocality, complementarity). This mirrors the classical/sense-based sublime (Kant) where imagination is overwhelmed and reason grasps ideas beyond representation.
• Aesthetic/emotional: Quantum phenomena often provoke awe, perplexity, or “awe + fear” responses—the affective core of the sublime (Burke/Kant) updated for micro- and conceptual scales.
• Conceptual/unpresentable: Postmodern accounts of the sublime treat the unpresentable (that which cannot be pictured or fully narrated). Quantum mechanics—wavefunctions, superposition, entanglement—serves as a paradigmatic “unpresentable” that challenges language and representation (Lyotard).
• Ontological/ethical: Some contemporary theorists read quantum theory as showing deep entanglement of observer and world, prompting new philosophical stances about agency, responsibility, and interconnectedness that have a quasi-sublime dimension (e.g., Barad).

Key thinkers and useful texts

• Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment (1790) — classical account of the mathematical and dynamical sublime; standard starting point.
• Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) — physiological/affective account of the sublime.
• Jean‑François Lyotard, Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime (1988/1994 trans.) and The Postmodern Condition (1979) — develops a postmodern “sublime” tied to the unpresentable and to science/technology; explicitly used to think about how conceptual advances outrun representation.
• Robert P. Crease & Charles C. Mann / Alfred Scharff Goldhaber — Crease’s writings (e.g. The Quantum Moment: How Planck, Bohr, Einstein, and Heisenberg Taught Us to Love Uncertainty, 2004) examine the cultural/aesthetic impact of quantum ideas.
• Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy (1958) — a physicist’s philosophical reflections linking quantum theory to limits of knowledge and classical concepts (resonant with sublime themes).
• Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway (2007) — uses quantum physics (especially Bohr) to develop an ontological/ethical framework (agential realism); not framed as “sublime” but pertinent for its rethinking of boundaries and agency.
• Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989) — Lacanian reinterpretation of the sublime; Žižek sometimes links such categories to science’s paradoxes.
• Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects (2013) — treats entities so vast or distributed they exceed cognition (a contemporary, ecological form of the sublime); useful for thinking analogously about quantum-scale weirdness.
• Arthur I. Miller, Einstein, Picasso: Space, Time and the Beauty That Causes Havoc (2001) — cultural connections between modern art and modern physics; useful for aesthetic-sublime readings.

Suggested way to read further

• Start with Kant (sublime) and Heisenberg (quantum-philosophy) to grasp the classical link (limits of representation).
• Read Lyotard for a direct philosophical program that ties the sublime to the sciences and the “unpresentable.”
• Consult Barad and Crease for contemporary treatments that bring quantum theory into ethical/ontological and cultural-aesthetic discussion.

Selected citations (for follow-up)

• Kant, I. Critique of Judgment.
• Burke, E. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.
• Lyotard, J.-F. Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime (trans. A. Lingis).
• Heisenberg, W. Physics and Philosophy.
• Crease, R.P. & Goldhaber, A.S. The Quantum Moment (2004).
• Barad, K. Meeting the Universe Halfway (2007).
• Žižek, S. The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989).
• Morton, T. Hyperobjects (2013).

If you want, I can (a) give a short annotated reading order, (b) extract specific passages where Lyotard or Kant speak most directly to quantum themes, or (c) sketch a brief essay outline arguing that quantum theory produces a new form of the sublime. Which would help you most?