Entanglement as a Hermeneutic Tool for Interpreting Humanities Texts: The Case of Oedipus the King and The Book of Job

Abstract

The essay seeks to develop the foundations of a general hermeneutics, by which I mean a strategy of interpretation that not only encompasses the sciences and the humanities, but also seeks to integrate them.  More specifically, certain classic texts in the humanities (i.e., those deemed representative of certain cultural traditions) are accordingly interpreted by way of categories derived from physics.  In the present case, categories associated with quantum entanglement are applied to the classic or foundational humanities texts: Sophocles’ Oedipus the King and the Old Testament Book of Job. The main categories brought to bear in this experiment in hermeneutics are the following: (1) entanglement itself, (2) locality-non-locality, (3) realism-non-realism, (4) latent and manifest levels of reality, and (5) internality-externality. After an introductory section defining the foregoing categories, the second section applies them to the texts in question with a view to redefining the relationship between two major components of the ancient world: the Greco-Roman and the Hebraic.  The final section concludes the essay by outlining the framework of a general hermeneutics whereby schemas and objects of interpretation are structured in terms internality and externality.  The former pertains to mind and culture while the latter is associated with a non-conscious materiality.  Thus, four interpretive strategies can be deployed to give a comprehensive understanding of the world: (1) externalist schemas of interpretation applied to internalist objects of interpretation; (2) internalist schemas applied to externalist objects; (3) externalist schemas applied to externalist objects, and (4) internalist schemas applied to internalist objects.

Received: 8 July 2021 / Accepted: 19 August 2021 / Published: 5 September 2021