by Matei Dăianu
In his book Against Progress, which is a collection of 13 essays, Slavoj Žižek explains his view of “holographic” or “top-down” quantum history, in contrast to the view of progressive/linear, or teleological history, as he writes. But is this idea of borrowing insights from quantum physics to sociology and history useful, or just a play on words and metaphors?
I personally think the name comes from a misunderstanding, as in physics, the holographic principle is a hypothesis which states that our 3D universe can be completely described as information on a 2D surface. Žižek actually mentions this correctly at the beginning of the chapter Holographic History but later mixes the idea of quantum superposition with holography: “[W]e can read it [history] as “holographic”- as the result of a series of contingent collapses of superposed possibilities” (Žižek, 2025, p. 31). After describing the famous double-slit experiment, Žižek writes that “When the wave function collapses, other possible superpositions do not simply disappear, they leave traces etched in the single reality that emerges. Does something similar not hold for political struggles?” (Žižek, 2025, p. 32). This is, in fact, not true, as when the wave function “collapses”, it actually leaves no detectable traces in the measured result. The meaning of the process of collapse is precisely that the former superposition reduces to a single observed result. Now, the nature of the collapse and whether the wave function is really physical or just a mathematical expression, is still one of the most heated debates in the foundations of physics. This alone does not go against Žižek’s reasoning in itself, though. He continues by saying that we should think of different possible historical developments as in a state of superposition until one is actualized. To me it is not clear why we should introduce superpositions to view historical contingencies. Why cannot we just say that a specific outcome requires a particular set of conditions working together and that these can lead to other outcomes if they function differently? Also, in quantum physics the collapse does not happen by itself. Physicists still debate about what is actually happening, but the point is that an external interference with the system in superposition is required to collapse it down to one state. History is drastically different. There is no outside of history, what would cause the collapse of the superposed possibilities then? In addition, the nature of randomness in history is categorically different from the randomness of quantum physics. The latter is truly probabilistic; it does not emerge from imperfect technology in the way statistical macroscopic randomness does. Albert Einstein, being metaphysically bothered by this, famously wrote that “God does not play dice with the universe”. Assessing whether history is fundamentally random or not is not the purpose of this article, but, in my opinion, Žižek’s analogy requires some clarifications. What kind of randomness does history entail? In what way is this randomness comparable to quantum randomness? I consider an analysis of these questions necessary before making statements about superpositions of different histories.
