A Seminar on Quantum Physics in Two Voices

August 7-12, 2025
Saas-Fee, Switzerland
1:30 – 4:00 pm CET

Quantum physics is famously unsettling—not because it’s inherently incomprehensible, but because it reconfigures the very scaffolding of reality as we’ve known it. In this seminar, two guides—a renowned theoretical physicist, Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond, and a philosopher specializing in the contemporary entanglements of science and metaphysics—join forces to make sense of the quantum landscape in its dual dimensions: as rigorous scientific theory and as a provocation to thought.

We begin by getting the basics straight. Lévy-Leblond, celebrated for his crystal-clear pedagogy, will lay out the constitutive intuitions of quantum theory: what does it mean to say that particles are also waves, that they are not strictly localized in spacetime, or that they exist in uncanny states of superposition—a liminal cloud of possibilities that only collapses into actuality under certain conditions? Schrödinger’s cat, neither dead nor alive until observed, is not just a curious metaphor but a clue to the profound role of indeterminacy and chance in nature’s fabric.

But this is no mere technical primer. Together, we will probe the philosophical reverberations of these ideas. What becomes of causality, individuality, and reality itself when confronted with non-local correlations and entangled states? Is the world best described as a network of relations rather than a collection of discrete substances? Can quantum events be fully understood within a classical framework of space, time, and matter, or do they demand a new ontology, where the virtual and the actual, the possible and the real, are inseparably intertwined?

Far from the breathless exaltations of “quantum mysticism,” this seminar invites a sober yet adventurous inquiry into what the quantum paradigm does—both within physics and beyond. We will consider how thinkers like Barad, Stengers, Laruelle, or Rovelli have mobilized quantum concepts to rethink matter, agency, and even political subjectivity. How do frameworks such as agential realism or process ontology harness the lessons of quantum theory? Is there such a thing as “quantum philosophy”? And so on.

In an era awash with vague invocations of “the quantum,” this seminar offers a rare opportunity to gain a rigorous understanding of quantum mechanics from a scientific perspective, and to wrestle with its implications in conversation with philosophy’s most searching questions. Whether your interest lies in science, critical theory, or simply the desire to understand the world more deeply, Quantum Thoughts promises a unique intellectual adventure—one that challenges both the way we think about nature and the way nature thinks through us.

For more information about our other seminars, please follow this link .

All seminars are open to auditing, with the following fees:

* $600 (in-person auditing);
* $400 (online auditing).

To inquire about auditing any of our seminars, please contact Dr. Nemanja Mitrović (nemanja.mitrovic@egs.edu) or Carole Salzmann (admissions@egs.edu).

For information on applying for MA or PhD studies at the EGS, please click here.