According to Bohm the whole scientific description of the Universe is governed by fragmentation of our perception of what reality is. Physics’ tendency of acknowledging the ultimate structure of matter in the elementary particles has caused a widespread fragmentary view of the Universe. Thus, Physics seems to be unable to conceive the “undivided wholeness of the universe” and to acknowledge in that Wholeness the common, single bed of the whole of reality. According to Bohm that single bed of nature, Implicate Order, is the single origin of both mind and matter. Inside the multidimensional Implicate Order, a universal enfoldment of everything prevails. The Implicate Order coheres deterministically to the Universe and the depths of its inwardness are totally unknown to us, since we humans are part of its wholeness too. Physics as a science provides us only with abstractive descriptions of the Universe, since science offers only abstractions from reality. These abstractive descriptions are what constitute the Explicate Order of the Universe. Thus, each belief we have that through the science of Physics we are able to arrive at an ultimate deciphering of the Universe is inherently illusive. The science of Physics can provide us with knowledge only in the fragmentary level of the Explicate, that means analyzable, Order of the Universe recognizing its cognitive limits in front of the Implicate Order. The laws that govern the Implicate Order of the Universe are unknowable and unanalyzable by man and in the depths of these laws Bohm insists that a final truth about reality cannot be fixed.
According to Bohm the whole scientific description of the Universe is governed by fragmentation of our perception of what reality is. Physics’ tendency of acknowledging the ultimate structure of matter in the elementary particles has caused a widespread fragmentary view of the Universe. Thus, Physics seems to be unable to conceive the “undivided wholeness of the universe” and to acknowledge in that Wholeness the common, single bed of the whole of reality. According to Bohm that single bed of nature, Implicate Order, is the single origin of both mind and matter. Inside the multidimensional Implicate Order, a universal enfoldment of everything prevails. The Implicate Order coheres deterministically to the Universe and the depths of its inwardness are totally unknown to us, since we humans are part of its wholeness too. Physics as a science provides us only with abstractive descriptions of the Universe, since science offers only abstractions from reality. These abstractive descriptions are what constitute the Explicate Order of the Universe. Thus, each belief we have that through the science of Physics we are able to arrive at an ultimate deciphering of the Universe is inherently illusive. The science of Physics can provide us with knowledge only in the fragmentary level of the Explicate, that means analyzable, Order of the Universe recognizing its cognitive limits in front of the Implicate Order. The laws that govern the Implicate Order of the Universe are unknowable and unanalyzable by man and in the depths of these laws Bohm insists that a final truth about reality cannot be fixed.
My claim is that among the various attempts at giving a metaphysical representation of the physical world, Bohm’s holographic paradigm is powerfully explanatory and deserves consideration. The central notion of this paradigm is the order as intrinsically related to any scientific theory. In particular, the order characterizing this new paradigm finds its exemplification in the hologram. The hologram, indeed, reveals interesting features: first of all, when suitably illuminated, it shows a construction of two different levels of order, an implicate one and an explicate one, which, however, give rise to a general whole unbroken order; moreover, each part of the hologram contains the information of all the other parts revealing again an unbroken wholeness. I will disclose this new concept of order, following Bohm’s suggestion, both from a metaphysical and a mathematical perspective. In particular, I will show that the passage between one kind of order to the other is accomplished by a holomovement that consists of continuous unfoldment and enfoldment and that is well represented by the Green function and some algebraic transformations. Afterwards I will explain why this hologram paradigm is explanatory, especially dealing with the problem of nonlocality due to quantum entanglement and the quantum-classical divide. Finally I will claim that even though this view has been regarded as superficial and detached from reality, its explanatory power and its mathematical description should not be overlooked. My conclusion will therefore state that the order developed by Bohm could be considered a good start to create a new theory able to rightly address and solve the challenging problems of the quantum world.
This chapter focuses on the work of David Bohm carried out together and then pursued and amplified by his collaborator Basil Hiley. Like the case studies in the other chapters, quantum physics played a key role in this approach too, especially the notion of non-local order. Bohm distinguishes between “implicate order” and “explicate order,” with the former constituting the psychophysically neutral realm similar to Pauli and Jung’s Unus Mundus from which both the mental and the physical emerge as explications. In this view, meaning is involved at the deep, implicate level through the notion of “active information”. When the implicate order (an undivided whole) is explicated into a multiplicity, this does naturally imply correlations that constitute the mind-matter connection. We also explore Hiley’s algebraic accounts linking back to Eddington’s ideas, as well as some of Bohm’s views of the relation between perception, language, and reality.
David Bohm (1917-93) was a highly original and individual physicist. His novel ideas and profound intuition extended not only to the physical world but also to the nature of consciousness and society. Bohm regarded science as having become essentially fragmented in its approach to understanding physical reality and sought a more holistic physics based on order, transformation and flowing movement. His notion of an implicate order provides an unusual and exciting challenge for both teachers and students alike.
Over and above differences in terminology and cultural background, we try to show that the quantum physicist, David Bohm (Wilkes-Barre 1917 – London 1992), and poststructuralist philosopher, Gilles Deleuze (Paris 1925 – Paris 1995), shared a common aim in thought: to replace the classical (mechanistic) image of reality, which is still dominant in our time, with a metaphysics finally in agreement with the concepts and results of relativity, quantum mechanics and contemporary biology. For these two thinkers, the world of things that are well individuated in space and time, and ordered according to mechanical relations of cause and effect, are nothing but the momentary expression of an “undivided wholeness in flowing movement” that constitutes its true ontological ground. By means of this new metaphysics, the world of daily experience and classical science appears as the explicit manifestation or development of implicate order that undivided wholeness contains virtually in itself at deeper and deeper levels of envelopment and imbrication. The explicit world (of classical science and daily experience) is the result of a process of repetition, deceleration and temporal stabilization, triggered by the interaction of our measuring instruments – technical devices, sensory organs and motors, a priori forms and categories of the understanding – with moving wholeness, the thinking and observing subject of which represents a momentary and partial reflection rather than a solitary and autonomous fragment. By criticizing the classical image of the correspondence/adequation of being and thought, Bohm and Deleuze show that the thought seeking to grasp this wholeness in flowing movement inevitably interacts with it – by modifying, recreating and accomplishing it in one direction rather than another. Thought thus resembles a dance that tries to harmonize with the universal flux that generates and carries it away in a single movement with matter
David Bohm was one of the foremost scientific thinkers and philosophers of our time. Although deeply influenced by Einstein, he was also, more unusually for a scientist, inspired by mysticism. Indeed, in the 1970s and 1980s he made contact with both J. Krishnamurti and the Dalai Lama whose teachings helped shape his work. In both science and philosophy, Bohm's main concern was with understanding the nature of reality in general and of consciousness in particular. In this classic work he develops a theory of quantum physics which treats the totality of existence as an unbroken whole. Writing clearly and without technical jargon, he makes complex ideas accessible to anyone interested in the nature of reality.
Bohmian mechanics is the leading non-local realistic interpretation of quantum mechanics. Its development and defense against objections (by V. Allori, B. Hiley, and others) constitute a distinct field at the intersection of physics and the philosophy of science. The aim of this work is to examine, in the context of current debates on quantum realism, the scientific and philosophical ideas of D. Bohm in their interconnection. The novelty of the article includes: a characterization of D. Bohm’s epistemology, his system of metaphors, as well as a comparative analysis of his metaphysics with the philosophical concepts of N. Bohr and W. Heisenberg. In his epistemology, Bohm combines realism with the view that our knowledge is limited. In the case of a single particle, its trajectory can be visualized; for a hundred particles, this is practically impossible. Similarly, in metaphysics, the world is real, but at the deep level of the implicate order it is only partially knowable for us. It is emphasized that Bohm possesses a genuine system of mutually complementary metaphors that elucidate his metaphysics: besides the holographic one, these are “the fish in the aquarium”, “the drop of ink”, and “the radio signal to the ship”. The metaphor of the radio signal to the ship in mechanics demonstrates an informational, rather than a force-based, influence on the particle. In metaphysics, it acquires a broader meaning: information guides the development of macro-objects. In the philosophy of physics, D. Bohm’s dynamic holism is contrasted with N. Bohr’s epistemological line and Heisenberg’s Pythagorean line (A. Plotnitsky). Bohr also recognizes holism, but it is the holism of particle, apparatus, and observer. In Bohm, holism has an ontological, universal character, rather than being fragmented according to the observer’s standpoint. For Heisenberg, symmetries expressed in equations lie at the foundation of reality; for Bohm, however, the meaning and significance of equations are merely an isolated aspect of a unified whole, a manifestation of active information from it. These three lines represent three answers to the question of the foundation of physical reality.