David Bohm (1917–1992)

Hooray, another brilliant physicist who rejects the idea that nature is fundamentally mechanical. Key ideas: theories are conceptual models, not actual depictions of reality. We need to develop not just new mathematics, but new words to describe the operations of a more fundamental order, in which particulars are abstracted from a flowing wholeness, rather than a complex reality being built up from particulars. Quantum theory and relativity are both descriptions of emergent phenomena; there show more is a more fundamental level of reality from which those phenomena emerge. The cosmos is not made up of disparate things but concentrations of energy and matter that emerge out of and fold back into one another. Its more fundamental operations, which he describes as enfolding and unfolding, or an implicate order and an explicate order, resemble much more how living organisms develop from seeds containing all the necessary information for their unfolding than the unaltering, isolable operations of a machine. He resorts to - perhaps better said originates - the holographic paradigm - which string theorists are now also toying with - of three-dimensional space being a projection of a higher dimensional space, and I wish that wasn't necessary... I'd like to think we really are at home in this universe, and not just things like Plato's shadows on the wall. But all in all, beautiful, useful thinking. Too bad that thirty years later, it's still the outrider view.

In fact, for his interest in mysticism, Bohm has apparently been consigned by many in his field to the untouchable zone where the woo-peddlers live. What a strange place science has come to. It's like an historical cycle of abuse: abused by the Church in its infancy, science now represses, demeans, and exiles any shadow of teleological or non-mechanistic thinking; it has its own triumphant Inquisition purging its ranks of heretics. And conveniently ignoring how capable of error and of corporate or ideological capture science still can be. Religious zealots with a political agenda are still dangerous, no one's denying that. Some so-called mystics may really be quacks, or somebody with something to sell you, but many of science's most ardent defenders seem to be throwing a bunch of promising babies out with the bathwater. show less

I’ve heard agroecology researchers such as Rafter Sass Ferguson spurn analogies relating to quantum physics in the field of permaculture. Regardless of whether or not you’re judgmental of such references, it seems as though Bohm’s work may have significantly contributed to the cliché that particle physics has everything to do with cosmology.

“Wholeness and the Implicate Order” is an annotated collection of essays, spanning the years 1962 to 1976, with the compilation first show more published in 1980. The author, David Bohm, was an influential American theoretical physicist in the 20th century. As such, this book is heavy on calculus (although there are still long stretches appropriate for the layperson).

The book explores cosmology through the lens of theoretical physics. The paradox at the heart of the text is the discontinuous world of quantum physics, juxtaposed with the continuous world of relativity. Bohm seeks to transcend these seemingly-incongruous paradigms with a unified field theory, or a theory of universal wholeness.

In the introduction, he states:

“Science itself is demanding a new, non-fragmentary world view” (page xi).

He reiterates this a little later, saying:

“What is primarily need is a growing realization of the extremely great danger of going on with a fragmentary process of thought” (page19).

Although he doesn’t cite any examples in the text, what comes to mind for me when hearing such warnings are nuclear weapons, and cost/benefit analysis, both of which leave us with impossible choices. I would agree that our fragmentary process of thought is one of the biggest threats to humanity and the planet.

How can we begin shifting to a paradigm centered on wholeness? Bohm first explores the avenue of language. In what ways does language influence our conception of separateness and inter-relatedness? Whereas our current grammatical structures emphasize the noun, what would happen if we gave priority to the verb? Whereas nouns emphasize objects and things, verbs emphasize relationships.

At this point, we’re exposed to more playful side of Bohm. His creativity, both in the words he makes up or unearths (such as “implicate"), as well as in the creative sentence structures he deploys, are both pertinent and sometimes comical. After an exploration of language, Bohm moves in to a dispelling of the concept that “reality” could be a useful concept for humanity.

“Any describable event, object, entity, etc., is an abstraction from an unknown and undefinable totality of flowing movement” (page 49).

In other words, every concept we have, every model we use—they can only ever be naïve oversimplifications. To be human is to constantly create and reference maps of the world around us fed by our sensory perception.

To better explain this concept, it might be useful to consider the word “fact.” Etymologically, facts are “manufactured,” or “made” (page 142). In other words, facts are not absolutely “right” or “wrong.” Rather, facts are an emergent property of their cultural contexts. Bohm dusts off an old word for the process of summoning context: “relevate: to make relevant."

In a paradigm defined by interconnection, we can’t compartmentalize through the construct of separation, but we can draw thresholds that distinguish between different organs of a system. In regard to thresholds, Bohm explores the word “measure.” Traditionally, this word was associated with limits or boundaries.

“To illustrate this meaning of the word “measure” in physics, one could say that “the measure of water” is between 0º and 100ºC. In other words, measure primarily gives the limits of qualities or of orders of movement and behavior” (page 118).

In our world today of Big Data and endless analytics, I wonder if there are things to be gained by drawing upon this older method of measurement.

Moving on to the core subject of the book: what is implicate and explicate? The implicate order is the medium of reality; it structures everything that is. The explicate order is that which our human minds can comprehend and interact with: what we call the physical world (an abstraction in itself), and the mental maps by which we navigate it.

These terms can quickly become disorienting—is the implicate that which is within, and the explicate that which is without? And yet, isn’t it our minds that create the explicate, and the implicate that is fundamental reality? These sorts of questions are one indicator that Bohm is onto something. This paradigm is alive and in motion, and can’t by daintily summed up, but rather, can only be understood through lived experience.

The implicate and explicate are related through a process Bohm terms “enfoldment.” The explicate in enfolded within the implicate. And the implicate unfolds to reveal and manifest the explicate. Although Bohm doesn’t reference the concept of potential in the text, the implicate has a lot to do with the world of potential.

At this point it is worth highlighting Bohm’s relationships with one of his contemporaries, J. G. Bennett. Bennett, a Brittish intellectual, was a student of the mystic G. I. Gurdjieff, and steward of a spiritual lineage called the Fourth Way or the Work. Bohm and Bennett had an extensive correspondence, and I can’t help but wonder what sort of cross-pollination might have been a result of their overlapping endeavors.

In conclusion, Bohm’s work is alive and well today; it is one of the sources upon which Carol Sanford’s Development School regularly draws upon in her work with regenerative business. With the existential crises such as climate change, Bohm’s ideas are more necessary than ever before, and it wouldn’t hurt if this book became more widely read and discussed. show less

David Bohm, the author of “On Dialogue,” was apparently recognized as one of the greatest theoretical physicists of the twentieth century. Despite my background in physics, I’d never heard of his contributions to the field, and I’d certainly never heard of his contributions to other fields, including … well, whatever you could call this book. Is it philosophy? Communications? I know it’s not an attempt at literary theory, but some of it seems to resemble it. It fancies itself a show more visionary way of reimagining and reawakening the power of human communication, but much of it sounds like New Age occultism – spooky and obscurantist, weird and much of it frankly unfounded.

Bohm thinks that following his recommendations will result in a kind of enhanced, unbiased conversation (which he insists on calling “dialogue”) between people that will help foster a common sense of humanity, and that our dialogue with one another has been irrevocably tainted by personal ambition and unexamined prejudices. Because we have these presuppositions, we can only engage in “conversations” (which is somehow very different from dialogue, which is the idealized type of human interaction). How conversation is different from dialogue is never really discussed. The way we can reestablish this most meaningful type of human connection is by letting go of these ambitions and prejudices.

He says that dialogue should ideally begin with no set purpose, no leader, and no hidden assumptions or opinions which will only serve to make you defensive during the course of the dialogue. Now, gentle reader, there is a difference between suspending opinions which might be culturally or religiously biased, which is something I would completely understand doing to open a dialogue fully up, and what Bohm is asking us to do in this book. He seems to want us to sit and listen to absolutely anyone say anything they sincerely believe. But the problem with sincerity is this: it and four dollars will buy you a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

Considering that Bohm is a scientist and is ostensibly on the hunt for something resembling truth about the physical world, this is somewhat disheartening to read. Do I need to suspend my judgments about the absurdity of Holocaust denial when I speak to someone who actually denies historical reality? Or fail to adduce the evidence that the Earth is roughly spherical to a flat Earther while engaged in a conversation with one? For someone who thinks that the scientific endeavor is something other than an utterly futile one, how can someone genuinely think these things? To request that we listen to varying opinions, measure their respective amounts of evidence, and adopt the one that has the most explanatory power all the while maintaining a cool head about those who have very different ideas from our own is a very good idea. Actually engaging people with ridiculous, patently false ideas is another. Not only is it silly, but it’s dangerous. There are some people who should be disabused of their false ideas. In fact, if that’s not the main point of dialogue, it should be one of its major reasons for existing. To say that dialogue shouldn’t be used for the purpose of convincing people of things we know to be true is detrimental to the idea of any kind of human interaction, especially if you believe that some things are true and some things aren’t.

This is mostly a collection of ad hoc work, with only a couple of pieces having been previously published elsewhere. Most of what I spoke about above is found in the first piece, “On Dialogue.” The subsequent pieces serve to expound upon the first in minor, tangential ways, and none of them seemed as egregious as what was set forward in the first piece. If this is the kind of uncritical work that Bohm is known for, I think I can safely bypass his other stuff and regard him for what he is: a physicist who should stick to doing what he knows best. show less

The last couple of chapters are rubbish. But this book is hugely valuable (without commenting one way or another on the correctness of Bohm's theory) for disabusing the reader of the notion that QM as it is universally taught is the only plausible interpretation of the experimental results (I discount less-than-helpful stories such as Everett's and De Witt's speculations). This book presents a coherent picture of systems in which there is no bizarre collapse of the wavefunction, or show more superposition of states, or the troublesome division of the universe into "the system being measured" and "the system doing the measuring" -- hence the title -- and yet that reproduces the observed experimental results.

A one-word (albeit a hyphenated one) description of this book: eye-opening. show less