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by Geoff Haselhurst
January, 2005
from
SpaceAndMotion Website
 Introductory
Quotes
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It is proposed that the widespread
and pervasive distinctions between people (race, nation, family,
profession, etc., etc.) which are now preventing mankind from
working together for the common good, and indeed, even for
survival, have one of the key factors of their origin in a kind
of thought that treats things as inherently divided,
disconnected, and "broken up" into yet smaller constituent
parts.
Each part is considered to be essentially independent and
self-existent.
(David Bohm, Wholeness and the
Implicate Order)
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The notion that all these fragments
is separately existent is evidently an illusion, and this
illusion cannot do other than lead to endless conflict and
confusion. Indeed, the attempt to live according to the notion
that the fragments are really separate is, in essence, what has
led to the growing series of extremely urgent crises that is
confronting us today.
Thus, as is now well known, this way of
life has brought about pollution, destruction of the balance of
nature, over-population, world-wide economic and political
disorder and the creation of an overall environment that is
neither physically nor mentally healthy for most of the people
who live in it.
Individually there has developed a widespread
feeling of helplessness and despair, in the face of what seems
to be an overwhelming mass of disparate social forces, going
beyond the control and even the comprehension of the human
beings who are caught up in it.
(David Bohm, Wholeness and the
Implicate Order, 1980)
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Reality cannot be found except in
One single source, because of the interconnection of all things
with one another.
(Leibniz, 1670)
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We are a part of Nature as a whole
whose order we follow.
(Spinoza, Ethics, 1673)
A Very Brief
Introduction
The following article on David Bohm’s Wholeness and Implicate Order
is very consistent with the Wave Structure of Matter. That at a
fundamental level reality is not made of discrete and separate parts
(particles), but One interconnected whole.
The Wave Structure of
Matter agrees as the following brief summary explains:
If we abide by the rules of Science,
which aims to unite a posteriori / empirical evidence from our
Senses with a priori reason / logic from Principles, it is clear
that we can now describe Matter (Reality) more simply in terms
of Spherical Standing Waves in Space (rather than discrete
particles and forces in space and time).
The purpose of this article is to explain and solve previous
philosophical problems that arose because of the wrong
metaphysical foundations of our language (currently founded on
four separate things - Matter as ’Particles’ generating ’Forces’
in ’Space’ and ’Time’).
Very briefly summarized:
To unite these four separate things
we must describe Reality from One Thing. The Metaphysics of
Space and Motion and the Wave Structure of Matter is founded on
One Principle which describes One Substance, Space, and its
Properties as a Wave-Medium. Matter Exists as Spherical Standing
Waves in Space.
Time is caused by wave Motion (as spherical wave
motions of Space which cause matter’s activity and the phenomena
of time). The discrete ’particle’ effect of matter is formed by
the Wave-Center of the Spherical Waves. (See Diagrams below.)
Forces result from wave interactions
of the Spherical In and Out Waves with other matter in the
universe which change the location of the Wave-Center (and which
we ’see’ as a ’force accelerating a particle’.
 +
=
This rough diagram
shows how the Spherical In and Out Waves
form a Standing Wave
around the Wave-Center ’particle’
I have added a few comments (GH -
Geoff Haselhurst) to the David Bohm article below, though I
think the comments are pretty obvious once you understand the Wave
Structure of Matter.
Essay on
Life & Ideas of David Bohm
(1917 - 1992)
In autumn of 1992, one of the world’s greatest contemporary
physicists passed away. David Bohm, whose work inspired many people
all over the world, died in London. David Bohm’s contributions to
science and philosophy are profound, and they have yet to be fully
recognized and integrated on the grand scale.
David Bohm was born on December 20, 1917, in Wilkes-Barre,
Pennsylvania. Bohm was fascinated by the dazzling concepts of cosmic
forces and vast expanses of space that lie beyond our understanding.
Bohm began his theory with the troubling concern that the two
pillars of modern physics, quantum mechanics and relativity theory,
actually contradict each other. This contradiction is not just in
minor details but is very fundamental, because quantum mechanics
requires reality to be discontinuous, non-causal, and non-local,
whereas relativity theory requires reality to be continuous, causal,
and local.
This discrepancy can be patched up in a
few cases using mathematical re-normalization techniques, but this
approach introduces an infinite number of arbitrary features into
the theory that, Bohm points out, are reminiscent of the epicycles
used to patch up the crumbling theory of Ptolmaic astronomy.
Hence,
contrary to widespread understanding even among scientists, the new
physics is self-contradictory at its foundation and is far from
being a finished new model of reality. Bohm was further troubled by
the fact that many leading physicists did not pay sufficient
attention to this discrepancy.
Seeking a resolution of this dilemma, Bohm inquired into what the
two contradictory theories of modern physics have in common. What he
found was undivided wholeness. Bohm was therefore led to take
wholeness very seriously, and, indeed, wholeness became the
foundation of his major contributions to physics. According to
quantum physics no matter how far apart two quanta’s of light
(photons) travel, when they are measured they will always be found
to have identical angles of polarization.
This suggests that somehow the two
photons must be instantaneously communicating with each other so
they know which angle of polarization to agree upon. Eventually,
technology became available to actually perform the two particle
experiment, but no one was able to produce conclusive results. Then
in 1982 a remarkable event took place. At the University of Paris a
research team led by physicist Alain Aspect performed what may turn
out to be one of the most important experiments of the 20th century.
There are some who believe his discovery may change the face of
science.
Aspect and his team discovered that
under certain circumstances subatomic particles are able to
instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the
distance separating them. It doesn’t matter whether they are 10 feet
or 10 billion miles apart. Somehow each particle always seems to
know what the other is doing.
GH - This is correct because
matter is actually large, as a Spherical Standing Wave in Space
(rather than a ’particle’) thus is always continuously connected to
all other matter in the Universe by its In and Out Waves.
This meant that either Einstein’s long-held theory that no
communication can travel faster than the speed of light or the two
particles are non-locally connected.
Because most physicists are
opposed to admitting faster-than-light processes into physics, this
daunting prospect has caused some physicists to try to come up with
elaborate ways to explain away Aspect’s findings. But it has
inspired others to offer even more radical explanations.
David Bohm believes the reason subatomic
particles are able to remain in contact with one another regardless
of the distance separating them is not because they are sending some
sort of mysterious signal back and forth, but because their
separateness is an illusion.
Bohm postulates that the ultimate
nature of physical reality is not a collection of separate objects
(as it appears to us), but rather it is an undivided whole that is
in perpetual dynamic flux. For Bohm, the insights of quantum
mechanics and relativity theory point to a universe that is
undivided and in which all parts merge and unite in one totality.
This undivided whole is not static but
rather in a constant state of flow and change, a kind of invisible
ether from which all things arise and into which all things
eventually dissolve. Indeed, even mind and matter are united. Bohm
refers to his theory as the holomovement. The terms holo and
movement refer to two fundamental features of reality. The movement
portion refers to the fact that reality is in a constant state of
change and flux as mentioned above. The holo portion signifies that
reality is structured in a manner that is very similar to
holography.
Bohm says that the universe is like a hologram.
GH - This is correct, this
dynamic flux is caused by the Wave Structure of Matter in Space (One
Continuously Connected Wave Medium).
So, in order to understand what that means, we need to have some
idea of the components and structure of a hologram.
There are
several explanations, but here is something of the idea. To
construct a hologram you need two beams of light (lasers). One beam
will bounce off the object that you want as a hologram, and the
other beam will shine directly onto the special photographic plate
or film. The interference patterns of those two light sources will
interact on the plate. They swirl around and do not look like
anything in particular if you are looking at the plate.
If, however, you shine a laser beam
through the plate of film, the object will be reproduced in the
3-dimensional form of a hologram. And further more, if you tear the
plate apart and shine the beam of light through any of the pieces,
the whole object can be reproduced. So, in essence, each part
contains the patterns for the whole picture.
One of Bohm’s most
startling assertions is that the tangible reality of our everyday
lives is really a kind of illusion, like a holographic image.
Underlying it is a deeper order of existence, a vast and more
primary level of reality that gives birth to all the objects and
appearances of our physical world in much the same way that a piece
of holographic film gives birth to a hologram.
Bohm calls this deeper level of reality
the implicate (which means enfolded or hidden) order, and he refers
to our own level or existence as the explicate, or unfolded order.
Put another way, electrons and all other particles are no more
substantive or permanent then the form a geyser of water takes as it
gushes out of a fountain. They are sustained by a constant influx
from the implicate order, and when a particle appears to be
destroyed, it is not lost.
It has merely enfolded back into the
deeper order from which it sprang.
GH - The central point here is
that our mind represents our senses (due to our evolution based on
survival) rather than providing a true picture of reality. However,
reason tells us that matter is clearly interconnected (e.g. the
earth orbits the sun) and that there must be knowledge flowing into
matter to explain how we can see things around us. This is correct,
and explained by the Spherical In-Waves which form the ’particle’
effect of matter at their Wave-Center.
A piece of holographic film and the image it generates are also an
example of an implicate and explicate order.
The film is an
implicate order because the image encoded it its interference
patterns is a hidden totality enfolded throughout the whole. The
hologram projected from the film is an explicate order because it
represents the unfolded and perceptible version of the image. Bohm
is not the only researcher who has found evidence that the universe
is a hologram.
Working independently in the field of
brain research, Stanford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram has also
become persuaded by the holographic nature of reality. He says that
the human brain can be modeled as a hologram. Pribram was drawn to
the holographic model by the puzzle of how and where memories are
stored in the brain.
For decades numerous studies have shown that
rather than being confined to a specific location, memories are
dispersed throughout the brain. In a series of landmark experiments
in the 1920’s, brain scientist Karl Lashley found that no matter
what portion of a rat’s brain he removed he was unable to eradicate
its memory of how to perform complex tasks it had learned prior to
surgery.
The only problem was that no one was
able to come up with a mechanism that might explain this curious
whole in every part nature of memory storage. Then in the 1960’s
Pribram encountered the concept of holography and realized he had
found the explanation brain scientists had been looking for.
Pribram
believes memories are encoded not in neurons, or small groupings of
neurons, but in patterns of nerve impulses that crisscross the
entire brain in the same way that patterns of laser light
interference crisscross the entire area of a piece of film
containing a holographic image.
GH - This is important, as again
it is founded on the principle that matter is large and subtly
interconnected to other matter in the space around us, as the Wave
Structure of Matter explains / confirms.
Capitalizing on Pribram’s findings, Bohm states that our brains are
smaller pieces of the larger hologram. That our brains contain the
whole knowledge of the universe.
So, you can see how each mind has a
limited perspective of the universal hologram. Our brains are our
windows of perception. Each mind always contains the whole picture,
but with a limited and unclear perspective. We each have different
experience in our lives, but each perspective is valid. Our brains
mathematically construct objective reality by interpreting
frequencies that are ultimately projections form another dimension,
a deeper order of existence that is beyond both space and time.
GH - Time, along with particles,
is a human representation, both being caused by the wave Motion of
Space. So the Wave
Structure of Matter is founded on the Metaphysics of Space and
(wave) Motion rather than Space and Time. But Space itself does
physically exist (as a Wave-Medium).
The brain is a hologram enfolded in a holographic universe. We can
view ourselves as physical bodies moving through space. Or we can
view ourselves as a blur of interference patterns enfolded
throughout the cosmic hologram. This could be also expressed with
the analogy that the brain is like the laser beam that shines
through the holographic film to interpret the patterns.
As it turns
out, you can preserve the interference patterns of more than one
hologram on the same film by using various different angles of
projection of the laser beams. Therefore, depending on the direction
and frequency of the beam that you send through the film, a
different hologram will appear. So, if applied to the brain,
consciousness literally becomes the co-creator of the reality
portrayed depending upon its angle of perception.
This does not mean that if I am looking
at a tree, it is not really there.
The tree is there on
multidimensional levels, which means that I am seeing a
cross-section of the tree depending on the level of consciousness
that I am tuned into. If the brain is a decoder of sorts, then it
can be tuned to different states or frequencies of consciousness,
and I will see different levels of tree reality depending upon which
one I’m on.
Therefore, mind contributes to the phenomenon of reality
itself, not just to the knowledge of it. In a brain that operates holographically, the remembered image of a thing can have as much
impact on the senses as the thing itself.
Bohm uses his idea of the implicate order, the deeper and non-local
level of existence from which our entire universe springs, to echo
this sentiment: Every action starts from an intention in the
implicate order. The imagination is already the creation of the
form; it already has the intention and the germs of all the
movements needed to carry it out.
And it affects the body and so on,
so that as creation takes place in that way, from the subtler levels
of the implicate order, it goes through them until it manifests in
the explicate. In other words, in the implicate order, as in the
brain itself, imagination and reality are ultimately
indistinguishable, and it should therefore come as no surprise to us
that images in the mind can ultimately manifest as realities in the
physical body.
So it appears that through the use of
images, the brain can tell the body what to do, including telling to
make more images.
Such is the nature of the mind/body relationship
in a holographic universe. According to the holographic model, the
mind/body ultimately cannot distinguish the difference between the
neural holograms the brain uses to experience reality and the ones
it conjures up while imagining reality. This effect is so powerful
that each of us possesses the ability, at least at some level, to
influence our health and control our physical form.
Contemporary scientists may ignore Bohm’s work (as many have done),
but they cannot escape its implications. His hypothesis is
rigorously grounded in the experimental evidence of physics, and
such it is not just a new way of thinking about physics, it is a new
physics, that is, it is a entirely new way of understanding the
fundamental nature of the physical universe, as glimpsed through the
data and laws of physics. It isn’t that the world of appearances is
wrong; it isn’t there aren’t objects out there, at one level of
reality.
It’s that if you penetrate through and
look at the universe with a holographic system, you arrive at a
different reality. And that other reality can explain things that
have hitherto remained inexplicable scientifically: paranormal
phenomena, and synchronicities, the apparently meaningful
coincidence of events. (Karl Pribram)
Bohm’s holographic theory has
found fruitful application in brain physiology and human
consciousness. This theory opens new lines of research, it predicts
hitherto unknown phenomena, and makes some novel predictions.
Bohm points out that there is no scientific evidence that argues for
the dominant fragmented scientific world view over Bohm’s hypothesis
of undivided wholeness. However, while scientific evidence offers no
help in this regard, other forms of evidence may, indeed, shed some
light on the matter. For example, mystical and spiritual teachings
down through the ages have also spoken about the fundamental
interconnectedness of all things.
If Bohm’s physics, or one similar
to it, Gary Zukav writes in his popular New Age book
The Dancing Wu
Li Masters (1979), should become the main thrust of physics in the
future, the dances of East and West could blend in exquisite
harmony.
Do not be surprised if physics curricula
of the twenty-first century include classes in meditation. With the
model of the holographic brain, the holographic universe, and
Quantum Physics, we could speculate that all that we hold as real is
nothing more than the playful dance of light, light that has no
dimension and limitless dimension.
The radical implications of Bohm’s implicate order take some time to fully grasp, especially for
Western minds, but whether Bohm’s holographic paradigm becomes
accepted in science or not remains to be seen.
http://www.essays.cc/free_essays/e4/dkt106.shtml
GH - It is useful to read the
Wave Structure of Matter articles on Metaphysics, Quantum Theory,
Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and Cosmology, which provide
sensible explanations of these famous theories.
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Metaphysics:
Principles Reality - On Metaphysics,
Reality, Logical Truths/Principles of Physics, and Empirical
Truths and the Mind’s Representation of our Senses.
Important
Quotes on Metaphysics from Aristotle, Gottfried Leibniz, David
Hume, Immanuel Kant and Albert Einstein. Reality cannot be found
except in One single source, because of the interconnection of
all things with one another.
(Leibniz, 1670)
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Quantum Physics:
Quantum Theory / Wave Mechanics -
Historical Analysis and Solutions to Problems of Quantum Theory
(Quantum Mechanics).
On Planck, Einstein, Bohr, de Broglie,
Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Born, Feynman, Wolff. ’Experiments on
interference made with particle rays have given brilliant proof
that the wave character of the phenomena of motion as assumed by
Quantum Theory do, really, correspond to the facts.’
(Albert Einstein, 1940)
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Physics:
Albert Einstein’s Theory of Special
& General Relativity - According to the general theory of
relativity space without ether is unthinkable; for in such space
there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no
possibility of existence for standards of space and time.
But
this ether may not be thought of as endowed with the quality
characteristic of matter, as consisting of parts (’particles’)
which may be tracked through time.
(Albert Einstein, 1928, Leiden)
When forced to summarize the general theory of relativity in one
sentence:
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Cosmology:
The supreme task of the physicist is
to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the
cosmos can be built by pure deduction.
(Albert Einstein, 1954)
The Wolff-Haselhurst Cosmology explains a Perpetual Finite
Spherical Universe within an Infinite Eternal Space. The
Spherical Standing waves determines the size of our finite
spherical universe within an infinite Space (Matter is large not
small, we only ’see’ the Wave-Center / ’particle’ effect which
has greatly confused physics).
Huygens’ Principle explains how
other matter’s out waves combine to form our matter’s spherical
In-Waves, which then deduces both Mach’s Principle and the
redshift with distance (without assuming Doppler effect due to
an expanding universe/Big Bang).
This also explains how matter
interacts with all other matter in the universe (why we can see
stars) as matter is the size of the universe, but we only ’see’
the high wave amplitude wave-centers / ’particles’.
Bohmian
Mechanics
Bohmian mechanics, which is also called the de Broglie-Bohm theory,
the pilot-wave model, and the causal interpretation of quantum
mechanics, is a version of quantum theory discovered by Louis de Broglie in 1927 and rediscovered by David Bohm in 1952. It is the
simplest example of what is often called a hidden variables
interpretation of quantum mechanics.
In Bohmian mechanics a system
of particles is described in part by its wave function, evolving, as
usual, according to Schrödinger’s equation. However, the wave
function provides only a partial description of the system. This
description is completed by the specification of the actual
positions of the particles.
The latter evolve according to the
"guiding equation," which expresses the velocities of the particles
in terms of the wave function. Thus, in Bohmian mechanics the
configuration of a system of particles evolves via a deterministic
motion choreographed by the wave function. In particular, when a
particle is sent into a two-slit apparatus, the slit through which
it passes and where it arrives on the photographic plate are
completely determined by its initial position and wave function.
Bohmian mechanics inherits and makes explicit the nonlocality
implicit in the notion, common to just about all formulations and
interpretations of quantum theory, of a wave function on the
configuration space of a many-particle system.
It accounts for all
of the phenomena governed by nonrelativistic quantum mechanics, from
spectral lines and scattering theory to superconductivity, the
quantum Hall effect and quantum computing.
In particular, the usual measurement
postulates of quantum theory, including collapse of the wave
function and probabilities given by the absolute square of
probability amplitudes, emerge from an analysis of the two equations
of motion - Schrödinger’s equation and the guiding equation -
without the traditional invocation of a special, and somewhat
obscure, status for observation.
David
Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order
1980
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I would say that my scientific and
philosophical work, my main concern has been with understanding
the nature of reality in general and consciousness in particular
as a coherent whole, which is never static or complete, but
which is in an unending process of movement and unfoldment.
Thus, when I look back, I see that even as a child I was
fascinated by the puzzle, indeed the mystery, of what is the
nature of movement.
Whenever one thinks of anything, it seems to
be apprehended either as static or as a series of static images.
Yet, in the actual experience of movement, one senses an
unbroken, undivided process of flow, to which the series of
static images in thought is related as a series of ’still’
photographs might be related to the actuality of a speeding car.
Then there is the further question of what is the relationship
of thinking to reality. As careful attention shows, thought
itself is in an actual process of movement. That is to say, one
can feel a sense of flow in the ’stream of consciousness’ not
dissimilar to the sense of flow in the movement of matter in
general. May not thought itself thus be part of reality as a
whole? But then, what could it mean for one part of reality to
know another, and to what extent would this be possible?
Does
the content of thought merely give us abstract and simplified
’snapshots’ of reality, or can it go further, somehow to grasp
the very essence of the living movement that we sense in actual
experience?
(David Bohm, Wholeness and the
Implicate Order, 1980)
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.. one who is similar to Einstein in
creativity is not the one who imitates Einstein’s ideas, nor
even the one who applies these ideas in new ways, rather, it is
the one who learns from Einstein and then goes on to do
something original, which is able to assimilate what is valid in
Einstein’s work and yet goes beyond this work in qualitatively
new ways.
So what we have to do with regard to the great wisdom
from the whole of the past, both in the East and in the West, is
to assimilate it and to go on to new and original perception
relevant to our present condition of life.
(David Bohm, Wholeness and the
Implicate Order, 1980)
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.. man’s general way of thinking of
the totality, i.e. his general world view, is crucial for
overall order of the human mind itself. If he thinks of the
totality as constituted as independent fragments, then that is
how his mind will tend to operate, but if he can include
everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that
is undivided, unbroken and without border (for every border is a
division or break) then his mind will tend to move in a similar
way, and from this will flow an orderly action within the whole.
(David Bohm, Wholeness and the
Implicate Order, 1980)
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Indeed, man has always been seeking
wholeness - mental, physical, social and individual... It is
instructive to consider the word ’health’ in English is based on
an Anglo-Saxon word ’hale’ meaning ’whole’: that is, to be
healthy is to be whole.
Likewise the English ’holy’ is based on
the same root as ’whole’. All of this indicates that man has
sensed always that wholeness or integrity is an absolute
necessity to make life worth living. Yet, over the ages, he has
generally lived in fragmentation.
(David Bohm, Wholeness and the
Implicate Order, 1980)
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In the prevailing philosophy of the
Orient, the immeasurable (i.e. that which cannot be named,
described, or understood through any form of reason) is regarded
as the primary reality.
(David Bohm, Wholeness and the
Implicate Order, 1980)
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If we supposed that theories gave
true knowledge, corresponding to ’reality as it is’, then we
would have to conclude that Newtonian Mechanics was true until
around 1900, after which it suddenly became false, while
relativity and quantum theory suddenly became the truth. Such an
absurd conclusion does not arise, however, if we say that all
theories are insights, which are neither true nor false.
... Man is continually developing
new forms of insight, which are clear up to a point and then
tend to become unclear. In this activity, there is evidently no
reason to suppose that there is or will be a final form of
insight (corresponding to absolute truth) or even a steady
series of approximations to this. Rather, one may expect the
unending development of new forms of insight (which will,
however assimilate certain key features of the older forms as
simplifications, in the way that relativity theory does with
Newtonian theory).
Our theories are to be regarded primarily as
ways of looking at the world as a whole (’world-views’) rather
than as ’absolute true knowledge of how things are’.
(David Bohm, Wholeness and the
Implicate Order, 1980)
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What prevents theoretical insights
from going beyond existing limitations and changing to meet new
facts is just the belief that theories give true knowledge of
reality (which implies, of course, that they never change).
Although our modern way of thinking has changed a great deal
relative to the ancient one, the two have had one key feature in
common: i.e. they are both generally ’blinkered’ by the notion
that theories give true knowledge about ’reality as it is’.
Thus, both are led to confuse the forms and shapes induced in
our perceptions by theoretical insight with a reality
independent of our thought and way of looking. This confusion is
of crucial significance, since it leads us to approach nature,
society and the individual in terms of more or less fixed and
limited forms of thought, and thus, apparently, to keep on
confirming the limitations of these forms of thought in
experience.
(David Bohm, Wholeness and the
Implicate Order, 1980
-
If man thinks of the totality as
constituted of independent fragments, then that is how his mind
will tend to operate, but if he can include everything
coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is
undivided, unbroken, and without a border then his mind will
tend to move in a similar way, and from this will flow an
orderly action within the whole.
(David Bohm, Wholeness and the
Implicate Order, 1980)
-
The notion that all these fragments
is separately existent is evidently an illusion, and this
illusion cannot do other than lead to endless conflict and
confusion. Indeed, the attempt to live according to the notion
that the fragments are really separate is, in essence, what has
led to the growing series of extremely urgent crises that is
confronting us today.
Thus, as is now well known, this way of
life has brought about pollution, destruction of the balance of
nature, over-population, world-wide economic and political
disorder and the creation of an overall environment that is
neither physically nor mentally healthy for most of the people
who live in it.
Individually there has developed a widespread
feeling of helplessness and despair, in the face of what seems
to be an overwhelming mass of disparate social forces, going
beyond the control and even the comprehension of the human
beings who are caught up in it.
(David Bohm, Wholeness and the
Implicate Order, 1980)
 David
Bohm Quotes on Quantum Theory
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The quantum theory, as it is now
constituted, presents us with a very great challenge, if we are
at all interested in such a venture, for in quantum physics
there is no consistent notion at all of what the reality may be
that underlies the universal constitution and structure of
matter.
Thus, if we try to use the prevailing world view based
on the notions of particles, we discover that the ’particles’
(such as electrons) can also manifest as waves, that they move
discontinuously, that there are no laws at all that apply in
detail to the actual movements of individual particles and that
only statistical predictions can be made about large aggregates
of such particles.
If on the other hand we apply the world view
in which the world is regarded as a continuous field, we find
that this field must also be discontinuous, as well as
particle-like, and that it is as undermined in its actual
behavior as is required in the particle view of relation as a
whole.
(David Bohm, On Quantum Theory,
Wholeness and the Implicate Order, 1980)
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In relativity, movement is
continuous, causally determinate and well defined, while in
quantum mechanics it is discontinuous, not causally determinate
and not well defined. Each theory is committed to its own
notions of essentially static and fragmentary modes of existence
(relativity to that of separate events, connectable by signals,
and quantum mechanics to a well-defined quantum state).
One thus
sees that a new kind of theory is needed which drops these basic
commitments and at most recovers some essential features of the
older theories as abstract forms derived from a deeper reality
in which what prevails in unbroken wholeness.
(David Bohm, On Quantum Mechanics,
Wholeness and the Implicate Order, 1980)
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At present quantum physicists tend
to avoid the issue by adopting the attitude that our overall
views concerning the nature of reality are of little or no
importance. All that counts in physical theory is supposed to be
the development of mathematical equations that permit us to
predict and control the behaviour of large statistical
aggregates of particles.
Such a goal is not regarded as merely
for its pragmatic and technical utility: rather, it has become a
presupposition of most work in modern physics that prediction
and control of this kind is all that human knowledge is about.
(David Bohm, On Modern Physics,
Wholeness and the Implicate Order, 1980)
-
One is led to a new notion of
unbroken wholeness which denies the classical idea of
analyzability of the world into separately and existing parts …
We have reversed the usual classical notion that the independent
‘elementary parts’ of the world are the fundamental reality, and
that the various systems are merely particular contingent forms
and arrangements of these parts.
Rather, we say that inseparable
quantum interconnectedness of the whole universe is the
fundamental reality, and that relatively independent behaving
parts are merely particular and contingent forms within this
whole.
(David Bohm, On the Intuitive
Understanding of Nonlocality as Implied by Quantum Theory,
Foundations of Physics, vol 5, 1975)
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The main problem with modern physics
is that quantum mechanics gives only the probability of an
experimental result. Neither the decay of an atomic nucleus nor
the fact that it decays at one moment and not another can be
properly pictured within the theory. It can only enable you to
predict statistically the results of various experiments.
Physics has changed from its earlier form, when it tried to
explain things and give some physical picture. Now the essence
is regarded as mathematical. It’s felt the truth is in the
formulas. Now they may find an algorithm by which they hope to
explain a wider range of experimental results, but it will still
have inconsistencies. They hope that they can eventually explain
all the results that could be gotten, but that is only a hope.
(David Bohm, Problems with Modern
Physics, Interview conducted by F. David Peat and John Briggs,
published in Omni, January 1987)
-
In the Fifties, I sent my book
(Quantum Theory) around to various quantum physicists -
including Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, and Wolfgang Pauli. Bohr
didn’t answer, but Pauli liked it. Albert Einstein sent me a
message that he’d like to talk with me. When we met he said the
book had done about as well as you could do with quantum
mechanics. But he was still not convinced it was a satisfactory
theory.
Einstein’s objection was not merely that it was statistical. He
felt it was a kind of abstraction; quantum mechanics got correct
results but left out much that would have made it intelligible.
I came up with the causal interpretation (that the electron is a
particle, but it also has a field around it. The particle is
never separated from that field, and the field affects the
movement of the particle in certain ways). Einstein didn’t like
it, though, because the interpretation had this notion of action
at a distance: Things that are far away from each other
profoundly affect each other. He believed only in local action.
I didn’t come back to this implicate order until the Sixties,
when I got interested in notions of order. I realized then the
problem is that coordinates are still the basic order in
physics, whereas everything else has changed.
(David Bohm, On Quantum Theory,
Interview, 1987)
-
The most radical change in the
notion of order since Isaac Newton came with quantum mechanics.
The quantum-mechanical idea of order contradicts coordinate
order because Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle made a detailed
ordering of space and time impossible. When you apply quantum
theory to general relativity, at very short distances like ten
to the minus thirty-three centimeters, the notion of the order
of space and time breaks down.
(David Bohm, On Quantum Mechanics,
1987)
-
Physics is more like quantum
organism than quantum mechanics. I think physicists have a
tremendous reluctance to admit this. There is a long history of
belief in quantum mechanics, and people have faith in it. And
they don’t like having this faith challenged.
(David Bohm, On Quantum Physics,
1987)
-
Classical physics says that reality
is actually little particles that separate the world into its
independent elements. Now I’m proposing the reverse, that the
fundamental reality is the enfoldment and unfoldment, and these
particles are abstractions from that. We could picture the
electron not as a particle that exists continuously but as
something coming in and going out and then coming in again. If
these various condensations are close together, they approximate
a track. The electron itself can never be separated from the
whole of space, which is its ground.
(David Bohm, On Quantum Physics,
1987)
-
It seems that people are ready to
wait twenty years for results if you’ve got formulas. If there
are no formulas, they don’t want to consider it. Formulas are
means of talking utter nonsense until you understand what they
mean. Every page of formulas usually contains six or seven
arbitrary assumptions that take weeks of hard study to
penetrate.
Younger physicists usually appreciate the implicate order
because it makes quantum mechanics easier to grasp. By the time
they’re through graduate school, they’ve become dubious about it
because they’ve heard that hidden variables are of no use
because they’ve been refuted. Of course, nobody has really
refuted them. At this point, I think that the major issue is
mathematics.
In super-symmetry theory an interesting piece of
mathematics will attract attention, even without any
experimental confirmation.
(David Bohm, On Mathematics & Modern
Physics, 1987)
-
 When
I was a boy a certain prayer we said every day in Hebrew
contained the words to love God with all your heart all your
soul, and all your mind.
My understanding of these words, that
is, this notion of wholeness - not necessarily directed toward
God but as a way of living - had a tremendous impact on me. I
also felt a sense of nature being whole very early. I felt
internally related to trees, mountains, and stars in a way I
wasn’t to all the chaos of the cities.
When I first studied quantum mechanics I felt again that sense
of internal relationship - that it was describing something that
I was experiencing directly rather than just thinking about.
The notion of spin particularly
fascinated me: the idea that when something is spinning in a
certain direction, it could also spin in the other direction but
that somehow the two directions together would be a spin in a
third direction.
I felt that somehow that described experience
with the processes of the mind. In thinking about spin I felt I
was in a direct relationship to nature. In quantum mechanics I
came closer to my intuitive sense of nature.
(David Bohm, Interview conducted by
F. David Peat and John Briggs, published in Omni, January 1987)
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