Customer Reviews

Wholeness and the Implicate Order (Routledge Classics)

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Bohm treats the totality of existence as an unbroken whole. His implicate order conncept: that any independent element in our universe contains within it the sum of all elements, i.e the sum of all existence itself. He describes an enfolding-unfolding universe with consciousness playing a central role. He was a great thinker ahead of his time. This classic work captures a good cross section of his ideas.

The Stochastic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics was developed over a number of years, starting with Louis DeBroglie's 'pilot wave' innovation, then being much further refined by Jean Paul Vigier, and later David Bohm and Brian Hiley of University of London. Much of the theoretical basis for their work rests on the split photon experiments of Alain Aspect and colleagues at the University of Paris. I.e. Aspect et al evidently found 'correlations' between the polarizations of separated photons at significant (~ 12 m) distances.

All of which is the underpinning for David Bohm's book, 'Wholeness and The Implicate Order'. The book perfectly ties together all the loose ends and integrates them - starting with hidden variables theory, going on to the quantum potential and finally the explicate and implicate order.

In the most general sense, the apparently 'fragmented' universe we behold- made of disparate stars, galaxies, galaxy clusters etc. is the explicate order. The outwardly manfest reality occurring in 4 dimensional space time. However, we cannot be sure that at a higher dimensionality all the fragmented forms are not unified.

A good illustration is one that Bohm himself provides in this superb monograph. Imagine a fish in an aquarium tank and two TV cameras are trained on him. One captures his frontal view - the other his lateral view. These images are transmitted to two separate screens-monitors in another room. The casual observer on encountering the TV monitors most probably would infer two separate fish. But in fact they constitute one fish at the higher (3D) dimensionality.

This unified order would be described as 'implicate' - and one can ascertain that the explicate order is or can be 'enfolded' into it. In effect, one confronts a universe that has deceived our senses. We are decieved into believing there exist a multiplicity of entities, when in fact there is only one. We just can't apprehend it from our vantage point.

Now, a number of books have come out with similar themes. Some of these are simply too childish, and with too many mystical or 'supernatural' overtones. For example, David Talbot's 'Holographic Universe' falls under this rubric, where he gets carried away and led on to considering 'supernatural' mannifestations and 'miracles' merely because the universe may be implicate. Fritjof Capra's 'Tao of Physics' also falls under this, but nowhere near as badly. If nothing else, one can get a reasonable introduction to particle physics and group theory in Capra's book.

I think the interested reader is probably better served by three other books, which I think ought to be read before tackling David Bohm's - which, despite some portrayals - is not a popular science work! The first is perhaps the cartoon-plus-text book entitled 'Space, Time and Beyond' by Fred Alan Wolf and Bob Toben (Bantam New Age, 1982). After that, I recommend going on to 'The Non-Local Universe' by Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos (Oxford Univ. Press, 1999). Then, 'In Search of Reality' by Bernard d'Espagnat which is the best immediate introduction to Bohm's work. To really enable the reader to appreciate it.

It also helps to have some general familiarity with basic notions of physics- such as wave forms, interference and diffraction. For example, this would be particularly useful in seeing how Bohm composes 'the holomovement' (p.151).

The mathematics scattered throughout the text, cf. the chapter on 'Hidden Variables' is actually very basic for a book of this sort of depth and insight. However, to fully appreciate the gist of things, it does help to have a background at least in Calculus - if not Mechanics. (The latter is especially useful in understanding the sort of canonical transformations shown, e.g. on p. 92).

Finally, rather than supernaturalist drivel, I think the book really shows that we need to think of new ways- for example- to describe the phenomenon of human consciousness. I already attempted one such way, using 'Pauli spin operator' gates in the brain, in my book 'The Atheist's Handbook to Modern Materialism' (Chapter 5, 'Consciousness and Modern Materialism'). This also leads to the development of 'quantum' neural networks with the possibility of non-local features governing their operation (cf. p. 157 - my book).

The gateway to this whole panorama of ideas and concepts - connected to an inseparable cosmos- is Bohm's book. I've already re-read it three times, and still find new insights when I go back to it. I had hoped that before he died, Bohm (or colleague Brian Hiley) might have produced a more popular 'reader-friendly' version, but alas it was not to be. Still, it is possible for the non-physics specialist to get a lot out of it by navigating the route I suggested earlier.

The only ones likely to be disappointed, if any, will be those who either: a) are not familiar with the preliminary work leading up to Bohm's, or b) those who mistakenly think this book is of the 'popular' variety.

What Freud is to psychoanalysis, Thomas Merton and Aquinas are to Christian theology and spirituality, Maimonedes is to Judaism, Picasso is to modern art, Armstrong, Ellington, Parker and Coltrane are to jazz and Einstein is to the first half of the twentieth century in terms of science, is what this man and this book will probably be for the next hundred or so years of our culture. I am still having a hard time with this book, because he reifies and affirms so many of my most cherished intuitions regarding spirituality via using the highest brand of intellectuallisms one can probably hope to use in today's world--AND VICE VERSA.

I would recommend anyone who finds the majesty of today's world and its endeavors to bridge the gap between science and spirituality fascinating to read first the work of his would be disciples: Michael Talbot (the Holographic Universe) and Jenny Wade (Changes of Mind). They will prepare both your mind and heart for what Bohm elucidates in this book, the central one of his life, thought and career.

Nonetheless, this book effectively bridges the gap, and becomes in may ways the blue print by which the highest level of consciousness and perspective achievable in the context of Western Society today will be henceforth embraced and appreciated. Bohm was one of the most important thinkers in Western culture, not just our time or the last century. And this incredible challange of a work of his may not take you half as long to fully digest as it is taking me, but it will open your eyes in ways that you would not expect about possibility, mind, matter, energy, thought, order and existence in the universe. The yogis and the Memphite priests of ancient Egypt were right: here is the proof by the highest science.

This is one of the better books on the philosophical premises and implications of the physics of the twentieth century. Although Bohm lost some favor among his contemporaries as he aged, his work was still respected. Without a strong math background, the middle chapters get a bit tough, but it is still worth the read.

At its heart, David Bohm's awe-inspiring book explores a deceptively simple and [I think] very old idea: everything in the universe that we can observe, measure, describe, and come to understand is connected, even if we cannot observe, measure, describe and come to understand that connection (Bohm's "implicate order"). It's not for the faint hearted. You'll be confronted with a devastatingly beautiful philosophical insight that completely undermines our post-"enlightenment" western tendency to divide, conquer, fragment and isolate everything we attempt to understand. You may need to skip the mathematical chunks and do some background reading into Quantum physics to survive the rigours of the argument. You'll probably get frustrated at Bohm's winsome ability to be mathematician and physicist one minute and philosopher and mystic the next. But if you hang in there, you'll find yourself returning again and again to contemplate this profound contribution to occidental thinking, as I have.

David Bohm is truly a giant - I normally read with a pencil, marking issues of importance or thought provoking ideas and concepts. Reading Wholeness and Implicate Order put this practice to the test - my copy of the book is littered with lines, questions, remarks and NB's.

I do not have an interest in quantum physics, so some of the discussions were a bit beyond my comprehension - as a book on philosophy though, the text stands out. Suggestions made by Bohm with regard to our fragmented views and approach to life, how we can and should re-look at all our frames of reference and even the use of language have far reaching consequences for mankind - that is if we actually give heed to "the call".

The principles and dilemmas explored by Bohm are of great relevance to all - I must warn you though, the book is not an easy read! Have patience and don't give up - the wealth of understanding and insight one can obtain (or at least be made aware of) by this book is well worth the effort!

A deep and enlightening book that ventures beyond the mechanistic paradigm of classical physics. I am not a physicist and as a layman, I found this book overall understandable, except the mathematical equations Bohm employs in areas of relativity, quantum computations and other physic equations of algebraic and geometric means. It really is a brilliant piece of work and not easy book to explain, but I can say as a novice, this is a superior work.

Bohm starts out with our Western fragmented view of reality, failing to see wholeness, thinking through our lenses of space, time, matter, mechanics, causality, contingency and so forth, as Kant pointed out how we categorize our perceptions. The notion we view in fragment is our illusion which cause confusion. It is our measuring net over reality that fragments it. While the Newtonian works for much it is also the fragmentation of our cultures, cities, religions political systems, etc. Our mechanics look for absolutes and any theory of absolute truths results in fragmentation, thus the differences between the atomic theory, the theory of relativity and the quantum theory into a form of reality that is moving, resulting in what he calls a undivided wholeness in flowing movement.

Bohm describes a language he calls the Rheomode. Basically it is the opposite of our views where language describes a noun in action. The Rheomode. describes the verb center of action. Rather than the order of "I" am typing, it would be, there is typing being done. Beyond all of the sequential order expressed in terms of our divisional language their is the movement of attention. Evidently, by our ability to perceive and understand is limited by the freedom with which the ordering of attention can change, so as to fit the order that is to be observed. There is allot more to this, apparently this changes our atomistic view, changes our world views of self and truth, by taking away the importance from our world views, removing the fragmentary breaks we project.

Bohm describes reality and knowledge considered as a process. There is something above memory and the mechanical process to reason in what Bohm calls intelligence. One might suggest that in intelligent perception, the brain and nervous system respond directly to an order in the universal and unknown flux that cannot be reduced to anything that could be denied in theories of knowable structure. There's an intense outlay between thought and non=thought, knowledge considered as a process, a free movement of the mind needed for clarity of perception, which contributes to a pervasive distortion and confusion of every experience.

Bohm believes there are hidden variables in the quantum theory, despite its indeterminism of the Heisenberg principle and Von Neumanns arguments and the paradox of Einstein, Rosen and Podolsky. In this he attempts to resolve, it gets a little heavy here for the layman in treatment of the quantum fluctuations.

It is here where the quantum theory is seen as an indication of a new order. While the theory of relativity recognizes continuity and strict causality and locality, a singular overall pattern of curvular continuous connection, the quantum recognizes an order measured in non locality in autonomous groups but not continuously connected, an undivided wholeness with separate groupings, the observer and observed become one, while separate, a holomovement where each part contains the whole in some way, a relative autonomy, different closed circuits of particles of autonomous groups.

The enfolding and unfolding universe and consciousness completely removes the Cartesian grid. It is the idea of a projected hologram from a non locality that enfolds into itself. From a void that contains all, a movement which unfolds in explicate order which enfolds in implicate order back unto itself. The electrons enter a different kind of state, in which they are no longer relatively independent. Rather, each electron acts as a projection share a non-local, non-causal correlation, which is such that they go round obstacles co-operatively without being scattered or diffused, without resistance, all so into a multidimensional reality There are infinite relatively independent sub-totalities which are abstracted, explicated as autonomous.

My first introduction to physics after highschool. This book captured my heart when I started reading it. It seemed as if - the book described my religious beliefs - in terms of physics! Complex issue. Easy language. Universal understanding.

The fragmented muddle that Quantum Physics has made of "the way we used to view the world," is at last confronted "head on" in this densely packed but short monogram. It is not an easy ride, but this, one of Einstein's last and most famous students, takes it on with the zeal and the relish of a young boy. Here, Dr. Bohm attempts to answer some of the most perplexing philosophical questions to face us since Zeno's paradox. The most important of which are: What is the nature and relationship of consciousness to the underlying reality of which it is a part? And also: What is the underlying commonality between the "relativistic order" and the "quantum physical Order?"

However, before he can address these, the first of several questions he attempts to answer, he is required to invent his own conceptual machinery in order to "work around" our own deeply embedded fragmented thinking. In the process of doing so, he comes up with a new way of understanding what a "universal order" is; a new way of using our language (what he terms Rheomode); a host of new theoretical and conceptual "constructs," the most important of which being his notion of the "enfolding" and "unfolding" of a holomovement, also known as the "Implicate Order." With these radically innovative conceptual inventions he leads us on a mathematical ride to new vistas for dispensing with our old fragmented Cartesian worldview and coming to grips with a new unified conceptual worldview and a new conceptual order.

Nailing down this new conceptual machinery turns out to be a daunting task, and each of his new concepts could fill a monogram onto itself, but in stride, Bohm takes them all on in this short book with poise and a great deal of clarity. His writing necessarily is as precise as his thinking, but always lively and never obsessive or forced. However, that this is true makes it only slightly less difficult for the reader to grasp the ideas in this manuscript. This book is neither for the faint of heart, nor for the causal non-scientific reader.

Even though Bohm provides an overview of the main themes needed to understand the content of this book, one still needs at least a rudimentary "and an independent" understanding of the basic problems and experiments of both Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics, and should at least be able to follow the main content and themes of the rather abstract mathematics that is introduced to support his ideas from chapter four on. Also, an additional word of warning is in order: this is not a book that can be "scanned" or "speed read." Many of the concepts are difficult and build on each other progressively. Missing the real intent and understanding of an earlier concept, as is true elsewhere, is particularly fatal to a full understanding of the later content of this book. That said, the rewards are great, the least of which is not that one gets to sit at the table of one of the great minds of ours, or any time.

What the Book is about:

In our current worldview, the three dimensions of space and the fourth of time, makes up the fundamental "axes" as well as "axioms" of "Cartesian reality" as we have come to understand it. This fragmented universe of four dimensions, that has so fatally separated mind from body, has served us well and is the best we have been able to come up with so far. However, as is the case with the four forces of nature, there has been the nagging and lingering suspicion among scientists that at a deeper level of understanding, these dimensions could very well just be part of a more integrated, continuous and singular reality, that is to say part of a larger existential and non reductive whole. Relativistic and quantum physics have traditionally approached this problem from different ends of the conceptual microscope, using "orders" peculiar to their respective conceptual modalities. However, against this philosophical backdrop, it is as clear as day to Professor Bohm that there is only one common reality and that a common more "universal order" must lie at the substrate and at the intersection of these two competing views of reality. As a result, he posits an idea he calls the "implicate order" which in his view, is this broader, continuous unified conception of reality all scientists have been in search of.

The problem is how to get from "here" to "there" -- from our present deceptively fragmented picture of reality (Bohm's "explicate Order), to a more unified vision of it (that is to his, "Implicate Order").

The missing conceptual link is that reality is not just a reductive Newtonian clockwork of many distinct and disparate parts, but is a continuous whole in a constant state of "connected motion," motion that also includes the movement of our consciousness!

The trick Bohm uses to nail down his idea however is to remind us that the movement that is taking place is only in the "relationships" and "processes" among the connected parts of the same universal whole, that is the constant "enfolding and "unfolding" of reality onto itself. We don't need the illusion of separate parts to understand the underlying reality, only movement: It is movement (like the vortex in an eddy of water that rises and then disappears back into the flow) and their relationships that give us this illusion of discrete parts and separate mechanical functioning.

It is this movement -- the "enfolding" and "unfolding" itself -- that IS "the reality," not the names we give to our own self-defined illusionary parts. This "flowing reality" away from and back into itself, constitutes a change in the conceptual paradigm of our reality in the same sense as that discussed by Thomas Khun in his "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." In other words, since our fragmented reality must necessarily be incomplete -- if not incorrect altogether -- it thus must also give way to a proper and much broader and much needed conceptual refinement.

That is my understanding of this book.

One of the reviewers, Professor Stahl, has given the very helpful suggestion of reading 'Space, Time and Beyond' by Fred Alan Wolf and Bob Toben; and Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos' "The Non-Local Universe," as well as, "In Search of Reality" by Bernard d'Espagnat, which I did. The last two of these were very useful indeed; the first one less so. I would add to Professor Stahl's list two other important book: Both are Professor Bohm's own books in which he is interviewed about precisely these very ideas. The first is called "Unfolding Meaning: A Weekend of Dialogue with David Bohm (Ark paperback, London 1985). The second is called "Thought as a System," 1992, published by Routledge.

In this last reference, Bohm makes clear that it is our language and our slavish reliance on our faulty measuring devices that has gotten us into trouble and that has led our conceptualization astray and into deep water. However, there is much too much to say about this book without reviewing it separately, as I will soon do. Anyway, this book (Wholeness and the Implicate order) will either "turn you on" or "turn you off." It "turned me on." Fifty Stars.

To get a real appreciation for the depth of Bohm, you should read the reviews by Philip Stahl, sqwark.com, and Earl Hazell. Stahl is atheist, Hazell is not. Stahl makes a strong case, but Bohm's own case is more compelling, and he was clearly more sympathetic to the possibilities of the implicate order than Stahl suggests. Bohm discusses these possibilities more deeply elsewhere. Nonetheless, as Bohm himself summarizes, in the conclusion of his book: "Through the force of an even deper, more inward necessity in this totality, some new state of affairs may emerge in which both the world as we know it and our ideas about it may undergo an unending process of yet further change." Bohm would certainly appreciate the risk of becoming too certain, as Stahl appears to be, in proposing a definitive paradigm, ala Kuhn's observations in "The Structue of Scientific Revolutions." See also the emerging paradigm of "Biocosm": http://www.biocosm.org/