A little over 100 years after its first formulations, quantum mechanics is getting trendy, popping up in social science and the arts.  The gratuitous references and gobbledegook that result make me very grouchy, but perhaps I need to fight fire with fire.  This, therefore, is the inaugural post in my new series Quantum Mechanics and the Modern Shepherd.

One formulation of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle asserts that the act of making a measurement inevitably changes the thing being measured.  Werner Heisenberg was describing the characteristics of fundamental particles like electrons, but his principle is equally applicable to livestock guardian dogs.

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Bravo and Cleo are typically wrestling whenever I see them, but Chip and Kathy Woodbury, whose house overlooks our current pasture, have told me that this behavior vanishes as soon as I’m gone — the big fluffy dogs immediately go back to watchful guarding.  The shepherd, by observing his dogs, fundamentally changes their behavior, and therefore can never gain firsthand knowledge of his guardians.  In future experiments, I will determine whether sheep are fundamentally unknowable as well.