bohm in process studies 1978

8/14/2019 Bohm in Process Studies 1978

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http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2461

The Implicate Order: A New Order for

Physicsby David Bohm

David Bohm is Professor of Physics at Birkbeck College, University of London. The following article appeared

inProcess Studies, pp. 73-102, Vol. 8, Number 2, Summer, 1978.Process Studies is published quarterly by theCenter for Process Studies, 1325 N. College Ave., Claremont, CA 91711. Used by permission. This material

was prepared for Religion Online by Ted and Winnie Brock.

Transcribed and edited by Dean R. Fowler. Transcribers note: The following

essay is the transcribed version of an address given by David Bohm at aconference organized by the Center for Process Studies. As the transcriber, I

have employed my editorial discretion in two primary ways. First, I have tried

to make the written word flow at those points where the spoken word was

somewhat awkward while maintaining the informal nature of Bohms

presentation. Second, numerous questions and points of clarification arose

during the course of the address. I have been somewhat selective in regard to

which topics should be preserved. Summaries of some of these comments are

included as notes. Third, I have not included the presentation of the

mathematics, which may be found in D. Bohm,Foundations of Physics 3,

139, 1973.

I am going to talk today about the implicate order, and perhaps I should first say why I

became interested in the questions of order. Order obviously involves everything that is

possible in the whole of life, so my interest in order extends to order in general. You cannot

define order (I will take this for granted): order exists; order is perceived. But we can

develop certain notions of order. One of the reasons behind my study of the notion of order is

that the foundations of physics are not clear at present. There is something which I would

call a "muddle" going on, and it has been going on since quantum mechanics has been

developed. As we go along, I will try to bring out what the confusion is. What you have to

try to do with confusion is to sort it out. It is no use arguing about confusion, because you

will only get more confused. Now the first point is that relativity and quantum theory are not

really compatible. I will go into this in some detail to show that the notions of implicate order

grow naturally out of real physical and philosophical problems or questions in physics. They

are not just imagined or dreamed up in some arbitrary way.

I. Relativity Theory

The first point I will discuss is relativity. If we go back to the nineteenth century, one of the

major theories was the ether theory -- the notion that space is full of a pervasive medium

consisting of material particles with strange properties. It was believed that this wouldexplain, at the very least, electromagnetism and probably gravitation as a wave in the ether.


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People also wanted to explain matter itself as a structure in the ether. For example, there was

the smoke ring vortex model of the electron. The theory was aimed ultimately as a total

explanation of everything.

This is really what was behind Lorentzs approach to these questions. Lorentz considered thestructure of matter as made of charged particles. Lets say that we have a crystal with some

regular array of particles that are in equilibrium in a certain configuration and with a certain

structure, so that the forces of attraction and repulsion due to positive and negative charges

balance in this configuration. The Michelson-Morley experiment had shown that it was not

possible to detect the velocity of the earth relative to the ether. Lorentzs explanation of this

situation was along these lines: he showed, using Maxwells equations (assuming that

Maxwells equations hold in the frame of the ether), that if the field of force is spherical in

the rest frame of the ether then it contracts along the direction of motion: l= l0 .times thesquare root of1 - v2/c2 Therefore the entire structure must collapse in that ratio, and, of

course, ifv = c it would collapse into a flat structure. If you tried to go faster, you would

leave shock waves behind, and the entire system would fall apart. It is implied that mattercannot actually reach the speed of light or go faster than the speed of light in this notion,

because matter is nothing but a structure in the ether and it cannot do anything which is not

possible for such a structure.

In this way Lorentz explained the negative result of the Michelson-Morley experiment. In

addition, because part of the inertia of a particle is due to the electromagnetic field around it,

as you speed up such a particle the electric field produces a magnetic field, the changing

magnetic field produces a back EMF, and this whole reaction of the field produces a

resistance to acceleration. Therefore, there was a contribution to the mass coming from the

electromagnetic field, and this contribution depended on the structure of the electron. You

could have said that the effective mass was equal to the mechanical mass plus some sort of

electromagnetic mass, which had the property of increasing with the velocity in the ratio of 1

divided by the square root of1 - v2/c2,because as the field gets stronger the whole system

contracts.

If you assume that the mass was all electromagnetic or that it all behaved in the same way as

electromagnetic (which was perhaps suggested by cathode ray experiments which showed

that the ratio ofeby m actually went as 1 divided by the square root of1 - v2/c2, then it

follows that particles get heavier in this ratio. Furthermore, if you went into the way in which

the force fields changed, you would deduce a change in the behavior of clocks, both because

their components got heavier and because the force fields which hold the clocks togetheralter. Therefore, you were able to show that ift0 is the period of the clock at rest in the ether,the clock slows down in the ratio oft=t0 divided by the square root of1 - v

2/c2.

The third point, namely the change of simultaneity, was the most fundamental one. Two

clocks together (call themA andB)would both slow down if running together. But if onewas slowly separated from the other and then brought back to the same velocity, you would

see that the two clocks were out of phase from one another. While separating, the second

clockB is going more slowly than the first clockA. Thus,A andB get out of phase. They nolonger register the same time. If you brought them back together, they would, however, get

back in phase.

As a result we obtain a shift among the clocks as to what is meant by "at the same time." This


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was the most fundamental new concept of the relativity of Lorentz. Changes of clocks and

rulers were already well known in physics due to temperature and pressure and so on.

However, now they might also be due to the velocity relative to the ether.

But the change in what was meant by "at the same time" produced more serious problems.Philosophically, it had previously been thought that there is a unique moment of time over

the whole universe and that there is a series of such moments. It became hard to define what

that view of time meant experimentally because separated clocks ceased to read the same

time.

If you use the three concepts -- change of length, change of time, and rate of change of

simultaneity -- you can deduce the Lorentz transformation, (It can also be deduced in other

ways.) If you apply the Lorentz transformation you will get the result

c2t2 - x2 - y2 - z2 = c2t2 - x2 - y2 - z2

wherex,y, z, tis one system of coordinates andx, y, z, tis another. From this, it followsthat there is no way to tell what your speed is relative to the ether. This was really the

problem which arose.

A great deal of confusion came about through this situation. It gave a tremendous impetus to

the positivist philosophy. People said that if the frame of the ether is unobservable we should

drop it. In a way that was right, but in a way it was not. The ether, I think, was dropped for

the wrong reason. That is, people made the right step for the wrong reason. That brings about

confusion, because the situation is neither right nor wrong anymore. If you accept it, it is

wrong, and if you reject it, it is wrong. Confusion is much more difficult to deal with than

just plain error. If you have an error, you may simply say: "That is wrong. Lets give it up."

But if you give up what is confused, you are just in the same state as if you keep it. What you

have to do with confusion is to be very patient and sort it out.

The confusion was this: People had said that we should really be able to observe the ether,

and if we can never observe it, something is wrong. Of course, that does not prove that there

is no ether. But if we can never get a hold of the thing experimentally at all, it is not clear

what we mean by it, at least as a concept. To infer from this that we should go back to the

phenomena again was correct. This ether was merely an idea. Nobody had ever actually seen

it or proved its existence. You have plenty of evidence of the existence of air, although it is

invisible. You can burn it, you can compress it, you can weigh it. But there was no suchevidence of this ether.

In one sense, what Einstein did was just to go back to the phenomena in order to look at

things afresh. But the problem is that what Einstein and others did, they did for reasons of a

positivist philosophy. The positivists said that entities which are unobservable should never

be considered in physics. From this it followed that we should drop the ether. This was a

correct step, but the principle behind it was wrong. Let me explain. Thousands of years ago

Democritus proposed the notion of atoms. Nobody was able to observe them for 1500 years

or more, but gradually people found out how to observe atoms. Now if you were to say that

you would not even think about atoms until you were able to see them and you could not see

them with your naked eye or with simple instruments, then you would never find them at all.I must consider the idea of something unobservable if I am ever going to find it. First I must


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think about it. I must think how I am going to find it if it is there. Then I look and see if I can

find it. If I say that it is of no significance until it comes before my eyes, I am stuck.

The positivist philosophy became commonly accepted -- at least various versions of it:

empiricism, operationalism, etc. Some of the positivists argued not that you have to look atsomething for it to exist, but that it must be a part of some operation in the laboratory or

some other empirical structure. I am going to call all of these ideas together by the name

"positivism." Although the various versions of positivism are all somewhat different, they

have one point in common. They all say that the essential point is the phenomena and that

physics or any law of science consists of nothing but a correlation of these phenomena. If

you have no phenomena, you have nothing to talk about. This is the basic point of view

which became very popular.

Einstein, however, did not hold to positivism. He went back to the phenomena, but later said

that we must go forward to the essence. So he did not stick to the phenomena.l When he was

16 years old, he thought of the question: what would happen if I moved with a light ray and,for example, tried to look into a mirror? You would never see anything. This is a perception

through the mind. Light is in some way different from sound. You can catch up with and

overtake sound, but not light. Also, Einstein felt that light was inherently dynamic; yet at the

speed of light you would see a static wave. Something was wrong. This perception was the

germ or key of relativity. Perceptions of this nature are generally the origin of new

discoveries -- not the experiments, but the perception of the nature of our thought.2

II. Appearance and Essence

I now want to say a few things about the relation of appearance and essence. This is

necessary because positivism, in the broad sense of the term, has permeated science since the

late nineteenth century. Positivism has gained prestige partly through the misunderstanding

of the question of the ether and partly through its accidental attachment to relativity. People

thus inferred that if positivism is supported by science, it must be right.

We begin with appearances whenever we look. Things appear to us in various ways.

Appearances are limited; they are particular; they are contingent; and they are always

changing. Appearances are not significant in themselves. The Greeks emphasized this point.

They said that the main point was reason. For example, if you walk around the table, its

appearance will change all the time, but you know that the table has a constant form. Piaget

has made experiments, I think, asking small children to draw a table. They always draw itstraight up, showing the way they think it is, and not the way it appears. It is a very subtle

thing to draw with perspective. It is necessary to rediscover how something looks, as distinct

from how it is.

The positivists began to talk as though pointer readings and measurements and various things

like that were the essence of physics. But pointer readings are not very significant unless they

are reading something. Thus, an ammeter is supposed to read electric current. Physicists

would be rather bored with the game of just trying, for example, by direct manipulation of

the needles, to make their meters read certain numbers. Evidently it would not be very

interesting to arrange beforehand in this way to have all the numbers agree with predictions.

The main point is that the readings are supposed to be reading something of essential


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significance, which is beyond the readings.

As mentioned above, young children are similarly looking for the essence behind the

appearance -- the relatively constant, universal thing, rather than just the immediate

appearance. Science is merely going on with this approach, and going deeper. The ethertheory and the atomic theory were two of the early theories which attempted to give some

view of the essence.

According to atomic theory everything is made of atoms, which are permanent. They move

through space. Their changing arrangements give the explanation of all the changes in the

appearance of matter, not only the changes as you look at it, but all the changes which occur,

such as burning, decay, generation. These are nothing but a rearrangement of atoms. It was

not treated just as an appearance. This point is very important, and it is what positivism

neglects.

Lets suppose that we are studying some actual factA. We have all sorts of immediateparticulars, 1, 2, 3, . . . n, which I shall callP1. These might be pointer readings or

appearances of animals or plants or descriptions of various kinds. These particulars are very

superficial and are merely the result of the fact that some very tiny aspect of reality has been

abstracted and we say that that is what we have seen. When we come to some universal

explanation, the immediate particulars are translated into what we will call the "essential

particulars,"Pe. For example, in the atomic theory the essential particulars are the structures

and arrangements of atoms. We are no longer talking about the way that something looks,

but about the way that we think it is. (And not necessarily the way that it is; that is a more

subtle question)3 The key point is that the universal theory does not merely correlate the

phenomena, but it explains the very existence of the phenomena and also correlates them if it

is a good theory.

The positivist approach (or empiricist, or phenomenalist) emphasizes that the phenomena are

given and are correlated by the formulae. While positivism may free you from certain

assumptions, it involves problems. Thus, people take a certain view of the essence, which

becomes too rigid. For example, classical physics or the atomic theory came at a certain

stage to be regarded as the absolute truth -- the essence. The positivist was able, by means of

his philosophy, to free himself from classical physics by saying that such notions were just

metaphysics, so that he could consider other ideas. But in freeing himself in the first step, he

became entrapped in the next step, because the phenomena inevitably depend on previous

ideas to be expressed in thought. You must use some ideas to describe the phenomena, someway of thinking, and that way of thinking is generally the old way of thinking. The old way

of thinking is whatever is at hand. You dont even notice that you are using the old ideas

when you describe the phenomena; for example, you put them into time and space or say that

objects are solid. When you describe them, you use thought, and that thought is the old

thought. Therefore, the phenomenalist point of view at first appears to free you from fixed

thought, but in the very next step, it makes you very subtly a prisoner of that thought. It tends

to prevent new ideas, rather than to help to fathom new ideas. Therefore, although positivism

made it possible to make a step in the beginning, it has had a generally negative effect. It

could also have been called "negativism," I suppose.

I will return to Einstein to give further clarification to this point. Einstein went back to thephenomena, and he developed the theory of relativity, which in the beginning was a theory of


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the phenomena. That is, there were certain observations to be taken in time and space that

were connected by the Lorentz transformation. When the theory of relativity came in, the old

view of the essence was gone, and there was at that moment no new view of the essence.

Therefore, it was a theory of phenomena in the first instance, and we should consider it to be

that.

The old idea in science was that there was a permanent, final essence which we are looking

for, although perhaps we have not got it yet. Positivism freed us from that idea to some

extent. But as I have pointed out, positivism held us in a new form of rigidity. We have to be

free from both forms of rigidity: the rigidity of the idea of a permanent essence and the

rigidity of positivism.

Our inquiry at this moment is not into nature itself, but into our way of thinking about nature.

This is what is at stake. We must give quite a bit of our attention to our thinking, which itself

is a part of reality. As a part of reality our thinking requires attention, just as any part of

reality does. The distinction between appearance and essence is always present in ourthinking. It is part of the order of thought. There is a distinction made at any moment

between the content of appearance and of essence. For example, even in immediate

experience, you have the table which is there and the table as you see it. But essence is not

permanent either. Essence is perceived through the mind. Probably that is the case with

appearance too. To say "I have a flash of understanding, and I see" is a form of perception --

a perception of relationship, of necessity, and so on. I call this "insight." Theory is basically a

form of insight. There is no meaning to the idea, I propose, that a particular insight is an

ultimate or absolute truth. There is always room for a new insight, which shows the limits of

a previous insight. Each thing appears to the senses, and its essence shows to the mind; that

is, they are both kinds of appearances.4

Einstein probably implicitly understood this sort of thing because he gave up positivism after

he had obtained a new law of the phenomena in relativity. The right approach is sometimes

to go back to the phenomena. But we dont stay there forever.

Relativity has led to a very serious problem, because in relativity there is no way to make the

connection betweenPi andPe. This is one of the key problems behind relativity, and it will

be the same problem that underlies quantum mechanics. I am going to suggest that both

relativity and quantum mechanics have not yet gone beyond the phenomena. They are

correlations of phenomena, and people have gotten so used to correlating phenomena that

they implicitly assume that that is all that they can ever do.

It was proposed in the ether theory that reality was made of ultimate material particles

constituting the ether. But as I have suggested, the ether theory was given up for the wrong

reasons. As long as you had the ether theory, you had a view of the essence, namely, the

ether. Matter, then, was taken as an appearance, inside the ether -- for example, as a vortex or

a smoke ring. But any attempt to make a theory of particles relativistically leads to

impossible problems. One view is that a particle is some extended structure. Now if I make a

space-time diagram of a particle at rest whose boundaries are given by two lines and then

suddenly accelerate it to another velocity, I see that if I push on one side of the object it

immediately responds on the other side. However, in Einsteins views of relativity, this is not

permitted. An impulse or a signal cannot be carried faster than the speed of light.


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Consequently, you cannot have a rigid or extended body in relativity.

The original atomic theory had rigid bodies of some sort, but rigid bodies are not possible

after Einstein. Lets say that a particle is made of smaller bodies -- of subparticles. Each of

the subparticles, if it is extended, will meet the same problem as a rigid body. Therefore, aparticle cannot be made of extended subparticles. Now then, what if it is made of particles

with no extension at all, such as points whose tracks in space-time can be represented by

lines? You will find that the fields around these point particles are infinite, leading to

inconsistencies such as infinite mass and infinite charge and so on (especially in quantum

mechanics). These inconsistencies can be removed to some extent by renormalization. But it

is not logical just to remove infinity by calling it zero. You may get certain right answers by

irrational procedures. For example, ifx/y =z, then if I writex = 2x andy = 2y, I will get the

same answer forzeven ifx andy are not zero. I can thus have a complete contradiction andget the right answer. Having the right answer is no proof that you are logical. However, when

you try to work out something else, the contradiction is going to muddle things up. Similarly,

people get right answers out of renormalization calculations by using irrational or illogicalprocedures. They may be right to do this, because it could be a clue to something, but they

are not really understanding what is happening.5

Therefore, neither the point particle nor the extended particle can be used to make a theory

which would enable us to understand what is happening. Relativity indeed implies that we

have to have a world tube in which something is going on -- a process, a structure. Also, it

implies that there is a field extending beyond that world tube, gradually falling off, and that

there is another world tube which gradually emerges from the field of that world tube. So

there is one inseparable universe. However, in some abstraction (that is, in the appearance)

there is a separation of these particles, because the field in between is weak and may be

neglected. Nevertheless, in essence, there is no separation in this view.

A serious problem exists, because nobody has in fact succeeded in making this kind of a

theory. That is, the theory of relativity does not have a theory of matter.

To bring this out, I first point out that Einstein said that the basic concept is a point event.

The thing that gives the point event content is a field (x,t). There can be no extended

structure for the reasons given above, so that we cannot discuss the permanent identity of a

particle as continuing in time. So there is nothing left but to say that the basic concept is the

point event -- something with no extension in space or time. Everything is built out of that.6

The point event, as considered by how it would appear to some observer, would look like

something which no sooner came into existence than it went out of existence. It would have

no idea whatsoever. It would flash in and out of existence in the very same step. That is, it is

the field at that point. You might think of the field over a period of time as an entity of some

sort having an identity, but this will not work, because you could have taken equally as well

another Lorentz frame in which the identity was the field along another space-time track. In

other words, it is highly arbitrary to associate field points along a certain line and say they

belong to some mathematical entity. In fact nothing but this point event is a basic concept.

Anything you build is a structure of point events -- an interrelated or correlated structure. But

any such structure is a process. Any order of point events can only be understood in this

flowing movement -- as process. The essence is process.7


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The serious problem in relativity is that it implies that we are committed to make an

explanation of matter as a structure of events, of field events. We must look for differential

equations to determine the laws of the field (as Einstein said) because only differential

equations describe the infinitesimal, contiguous connections of events. This is a linear model

with no long-range connections. But if the equations are only linear, any structure willdiffuse away and, therefore, must have some nonlinear terms. One would hope that the

stability of matter would be explained as a solution to such nonlinear equations, meaning that

matter is a structure of these primitive, undefined space-time events. Einstein and others have

sought to explain matter in this way. The immediate appearance of matter would be

translated into this essence, that is, a certain structure of events. Matter as it appears to us

immediately is some "thing" which is in itself stable. But according to the theory I am

describing, matter is no longer a "thing"; it is translated into the essential particulars as a

structure of primitive events.8 You can see how Einsteins thinking was going. He fully

appreciated the importance of not sticking to the appearances.

However, it was not possible to do this in any satisfactory way. As a result, relativity has notheory of matter in it at all. There are no measuring instruments; no matter; no people. There

is nothing in this theory. There is nothing but appearances. It is not a theory of the essence.

Einstein fully hoped that it would become a theory of the essence, and he saw that it was

necessary to make it one.9

III. Quantum Mechanics

Quantum mechanics is in the same situation as relativity, and perhaps even a worse one. As

you know, Planck brought up the idea of discrete quanta of radiation, and Einstein, the

photoelectric effect. Originally, people thought atoms were jelly-like things. Therefore, it

was quite easy to see why atoms would exclude each other and form stable matter. But with

the planetary atom of Rutherford there was no longer any stability in matter. The atom had a

nucleus with electrons orbiting around it. Because of radiation, the electron would quickly

spiral into the nucleus, and the atom would not exist at all. Therefore, matter would not exist.

So you have the same problem in quantum mechanics as in relativity. Behind the problem

was the fundamental question of the existence of matter.

Bohr, by a certain insight, was led to suppose that there is a lowest orbit, for reasons that are

entirely outside of our understanding at present. The electron will never fall below that orbit,

and this would explain the stability of matter. This was a most radical step. It followed that

there might be other orbits which are also discrete, which would explain the discrete spectra,and so on. But everyone realized that this was an ad hoc theory, somewhat arbitrary. It had

no explanation of the movement of matter at all.

Later on came the matrix mechanics of Heisenberg, the wave theory of Schroedinger, the

Born probability interpretation, the transformation theory of Dirac, and others. These

developments led to a systematic structure which made possible tremendous success in the

computation of all sorts of results. It accounted for the stability of atoms, molecules, large

bodies of macrodimension. And it showed that actual calculations were possible in a wide

range of fields with impressive numerical agreement with observed facts.

Most physicists thought that at last a new essence had been arrived at. They were soimpressed with the success of quantum mechanics, that they felt that this must be the


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essence. However, I would suggest that it is not, because quantum mechanics, while very

successful, is just correlating phenomena. There are serious problems as to what quantum

mechanics means, and I will summarize them briefly.

We have the wave function which Schroedinger brought in as a function ofx and t. (Noticethat he still used the old ideas of time and space coordinates.) Typical probabilities

determined by the wave function were (x,t)2, the probability of density of particles in space.

If you "Fourier analyze" the wave function, you get a probability of momentum, and so on.

The wave function was at the heart of a system of computing probabilities.

The most interesting new point was that the many-body wave-function is a function of all the

coordinates of all the particles. This is called the configuration space. You could no longer

picture the wave as being in space at all. It was totally abstract. The idea of calling it a wave

was really wrong. This point is crucial because this multidimensional wave was necessary for

all the essential results of quantum mechanics. Without it, quantum mechanics would

collapse; it would give results of trivial significance. Therefore, there was no picture at all ofwhat sort of essence the wave function might be referring to. It was just a characteristic

function from which you could compute all sorts of probabilities.

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle was an important part of the interpretation. Let us

think of an electron microscope giving the situation of a target Twith an atomA in the targetwith an electron coming in and being scattered by the atom. An electron lens then focuses the

electron onto a plate, leaving a spotP. In classical physics from the spotPwe infer theposition of atomA. From the spotP, the trackPP1, and from knowledge of how the lens

works, we could also know the momentum of the particle. Thus, you could compute from

this where the atom is which scattered the electron and how much momentum was

transferred to the atomA. Although atomA would be disturbed, you could make the

disturbance negligible, either by using light particles or by making corrections for the

disturbance. Therefore, in classical physics the reference ofA toPcould be dropped. The

whole experimental arrangement, while necessary to obtain knowledge about atomA, is quite

independent of the essence of the atom in itself. The atom exists in itself in a certain state of

position and momentum. Once you know about the atom, you can forget about the apparatus.

On the other hand, Heisenberg, because of the quantum nature of light or matter, said there is

a minimum disturbance of _p of atomA. Heisenberg considered it to be unknowable,unpredictable, and uncontrollable, and hence uncertain. Lets say there is an electron of

momentum p which gets scattered through some angle so that the momentum is p sin . Youcannot know the angle from the spotP,because the electron may have come in through the

aperture of the lens anywhere. Therefore, there is to a certain extent an unknown transference

of momentum to this electron. Also, if this electron which linksA andPhad wave-likeproperties, you would not know exactly where it came from. It would come from an

unknown region of size _x = sin . (Notice that you are using two pictures of the atom at thesame time. You are saying that the link electron is both a wave and a particle. This is

illogical. You are describing it simultaneously using two sets of properties which it couldnt

really have together.) Thus because of the wave nature of light or matter, there is a minimum

disturbance or uncertainty _x . From this, it follows quite directly that _x _p _h. This was

Heisenbergs uncertainty relationship.

With this relationship you could no longer infer what the properties of an object are from the


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observed spotP, and from a knowledge of how the apparatus was arranged, and so on. This

point is crucial because whether you used light or matter as the link, you could show that

there was always an uncertainty. There was no way out of this because the laws of quantum

mechanics were used in the link process. Using this argument, physicists criticized the

classical determinism, namely that given all the positions and velocities of all the particles inthe universe, everything would follow. No longer was it possible to know them, because

knowing them now consisted of interacting with them by using particles which obeyed the

very laws into which you were inquiring. And these laws had a minimum disturbance which

could not be reduced because of the quantum nature of matter.

Heisenberg raised the uncertainty relationships to a principle by saying not merely can they

be deduced from the laws of quantum mechanics, but by making the assumption that there is

no way out of this situation no matter how far you went. That is, he turned from a deduced

relationship to a principle, but there is no reason why this should necessarily follow. People

accepted this principle, in spite of the fact that there were no reasons why it should be

accepted or rejected. It was just an idea. And this is how I would criticize the generallyacceptedprocedure.

A second point to add, which is not usually made clear, is that particular experimental

conditions determine the shape of a cell in phase space, representing the uncertainty in the

classical properties of the electron. The area is h, but the shape is variable. The properties of

the electron thus, become ambiguous within some sort of roughly defined cloud of area h,but the shape of this cloud may vary considerably. Thus, x may be relatively well defined but

not p or vice-versa, depending on the particular experimental arrangements, such as the

microscope and the particles that are used. Mathematically, the range of uncertainty of

properties is determined roughly by the region in which the wave function of the particle is

appreciable; i.e., the region of position space and momentum space. Instead of using classical

concepts of precisely defined x and p we will now say that the wave function describes the

state of the particle as accurately as possible. According to the experimental arrangement you

get a corresponding wave function, and the appropriate probability distribution in x and p.

Now returning to the experimental arrangement, we see that the results are irreducibly

dependent upon the interaction with the observer. We can compare this to two views of

nature. One view is that nature is totally independent of us, and we just find out what it is.

The other is that nature is an artifact made by us, which afterwards may exist independently

until we do something to it again. From Heisenbergs point of view you could say that the

electron state is to some extent an artifact. We help to make it.

Heisenberg was not a completely consistent positivist. He said that the electron has in some

sense a position, which is disturbed. Thus he used a highly nonpositivist argument to justify a

positivist conclusion, which is perfect confusion, you see. It is nonpositivist to say that the

electron is disturbed in an unknown way, but he concluded from this that there is an ultimate

limitation on our knowledge of precisely where the electron is, which is very positivistic.

From the unknowable, Heisenberg thus concluded something about the limits of the

knowable.10

Heisenbergs view is not actually consistent with quantum mechanics. A more coherent form

of the view I have been describing would probably be closer to that of Von Neumann. VonNeumann says that as a result of this interaction with the electron, the atom is left in a certain


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state. It continues in that state, moving in its natural way until something interacts with it

again. The result of this interaction depends statistically upon the wave function. That is, you

can compute the probability that in the next experiment you will get a certain result, if you

know the result of the previous experiment.

Bohr has produced yet another view, which is probably the most consistent one. It is quite

different from Heisenbergs, although Heisenberg has subscribed to Bohrs view, thus adding

to the confusion. Bohr said that the experimental arrangement has to be described classically.

It was essential to Bohrs point of view, and probably to most of the others, that quantum

mechanics introduced no change of concept at all. The concepts of position and momentum

were the same ones in classical physics as in quantum physics. In classical physics they were

unambiguous in principle. In quantum physics they were ambiguous to the extent of the

Uncertainty Principle. But Bohr went further by saying that this ambiguity was

fundamentally related to the experimental conditions. He said that the form of the

experimental conditions and content or the meaning of the experimental results were a single

whole which could not be further analyzed. A way to picture Bohrs view is to think of thepattern in a carpet. There may be birds or people or trees in the pattern, but the carpet is not

constituted of birds and people and trees. Rather, they were merely abstractions from the

whole, which have no meaning in themselves. Bohr said indeed that there is no microobject.

So actually nothing is observed. There is nothing but the phenomena, and in this sense he

was parallel to Kant. The phenomena constitute the whole. We may use words like "particle"

and so on, but they are just picturesque language. We would probably be better off without

such language.

The algorithm of quantum mechanics then applies statistically to these phenomena. The

phenomena are described through classical language, but instead of using classical calculus

to predict from one phenomenon to the next, we replace the classical calculus with the

quantum algorithm -- wave functions, matrices, and so on. The essential point that Bohr

demonstrated is that it is consistent to do this. I believe that his demonstration is right. And

he is, as far as I am concerned, the only one who has presented a consistent view of the

whole thing.

But you must accept this view that the phenomena are irreducible if you are to go along with

Bohr. This is what Bohr called "individual." For example, if you look at somebody, you can

say that is what he is. There is no use to analyze the person any further. The second point is

that one might ask why the thing has to be described in classical language. Bohrs answer is

that no other unambiguous description is possible. Bohr felt that the description must beunambiguous. (At least the ideal is that.) And also he felt that you really couldnt change the

terms of common sense language, refined where necessary to classical concepts of position

and momentum. He felt that the common sense notion was built into the human condition.

For example, one might say, "Suppose that you try some other concepts." Bohr would answer

that with language you dont know which way is up and which is down. Bohr felt that there

was something inherent in the human condition or situation which required his approach.11

And I would not accept Bohr at this point.

Von Neumann did not accept Bohrs view at all, and Heisenberg was straddling between

Bohr and Von Neumann. Von Neumann said that the quantum state is an objective fact -- it

is a microobject. The microstate is merely a state that happens to be to some extent an artifactmade in the laboratory, but it is still there. According to Von Neumann there is a cut between


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the quantum system and the classical world. I will call the quantum state Q. Now the location

of this cut can be put fairly arbitrarily. Somehow the quantum state interacts with the

classical world, leaving an observable result from which you can know the quantum state.

The problem is that the cut, being arbitrary, could be put at various points. Von Neumann

mentioned that eventually this leads to an infinite regress, because there is always a furtherclassical world. Anything could be called quantum mechanical and could be observed by a

further system that is classical, and so on. This infinite regress would not be satisfactory.

Wigner has suggested that this regress may end in the consciousness of the observer (making

his theory a phenomenalist theory, probably). But Wigner goes further than this by saying

that the consciousness of the observer plays an essential role in making the quantum state

definite. Therefore, Wigner says that the consciousness of the observer is inherently involved

in the world. You may hold this view, but it may be criticized in a number of ways.12

One way is to say that if you introduce the consciousness of the observer as one of the

variables of the world you are still in a regress since it implies that there is an awareness ofthe consciousness by a further observer who sees his state of consciousness, and so on. I

think that this is no really clear point of view along these lines. You cannot introduce the

observer into the account explicitly. Whatever is in the account is by the very form of the

situation that which is observed. If the state of consciousness is part of the account, then

consciousness is what is being observed. It is always implied that there is an observer who is

implicit -- that is, not mentioned in the account.

I think this illustrates that the interpretation of quantum mechanics has by no means been

settled. A great many people have developed different variations. For example, Von

Neumanns view was not satisfactory to those who followed him; indeed, Von Neumanns

solution is not clear and cannot be made clear. Bohrs solution is relatively clear, but I would

consider it to be based on an arbitrary assumption about our human situation. Heisenberg is

not clear because he says he follows Bohr, when in fact he does not. Bohr never follows

Heisenberg.13 Thus, you have the same situation in quantum mechanics as in positivism --

people take the right step for the wrong reasons. The right steps lead to successful results, but

because the reasons are wrong, this brings about a muddle further down the line. A deeper

reason for the confusion is that most of the physicists were not sufficiently interested in the

interpretation at all. Because the quantum theory was so successful, they mainly wanted to

get on with working out the results. They thought that it was fine for anyone who wanted to

try to work out an interpretation. In fact in Einsteins biography it is pointed out that that is

also how Einstein looked at the situation described here. That is, very few people understoodwhat Bohr had to say, not even Heisenberg and certainly not Von Neumann, but most people

still accepted Bohrs interpretation. Yet everyone seemed to think that everyone was saying

the same thing. While people felt that it was in principle necessary to clear up the issue of

interpretation, they felt that it was really a side issue. The important thing was to calculate

results.

I would say that we have no quantum essence, because we have not yet given a consistent

description of matter. Bohrs view takes the classical description of matter, but no one

believes that the classical description is the explanation. Bohr avoids this criticism by saying

that we can go no further, because that is the human condition. Heisenberg implied an

essence by saying there was a particle which was disturbed in an unknown way, but it wasnever clear how one could discuss this. Von Neumann implied an essence, but again,


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unclearly. Thus, in essence, matter has not been explained in quantum mechanics. To be

consistent we should say that quantum mechanics is a theory of the phenomena. It is

consistent in that it predicts and correlates the phenomena, but it does not translate the

appearances into an essence in a consistent way. Although people do translate the

phenomena to some extent through pictures, these pictures are not consistent. They help theintuition, but to say that a thing is both a particle and a wave is not a consistent picture. It is

merely an aid to thinking. It would be closer to the fact to say that quantum mechanics is a

theory of the phenomena which is very successful up to a point, but not very successful when

it comes to trying to connect it with relativity, and not successful at all in questions of

interpretation.

I am going to take the point of view that we have no relativistic essence and no quantum

essence. Both are laws of the phenomena. They may be clues to some new essence which is

not relativistic and not quantum. Perhaps relativity and quantum theory will be special or

limiting cases or appearances of some deeper, more fundamental essence. But I will not take

that deeper essence as the final essence either. This is part of the process or movement bywhich we are continually learning about the world or nature.

For reasons which I developed above, relativity indicates that the essence should be of the

nature of movement or process or flux. "Process" is based on the word "proceed" -- to move

forward. You might think of process as a structure of movement rather than as a structure of

objects. The word "structure" in the dictionary means having to do with construction -- how

you make things. But structure is the order, arrangement, connection, and organization and

form not necessarily of things but also of movements. For example, we may discuss the

structure of a language or the structure of a thought, as well as the structure of a house or of a

crystal. In physics, the question of the kind ofconnection is probably one of the basic

features of the structure. Physics has generally looked for immediate contiguous connection

of events. So if things are far apart but connected, we assume that there is a series of

intermediate connections which are local and contiguous. That has been the pattern that

people have wanted to use.14

Newton introduced action at a distance (although he hoped to get rid of it), which allows for

an immediate connection of distant events at the same time. That is not inconsistent with

classical mechanics although people prefer not to have it. The quantum laws allow for

discrete jumps and connections of things not connected by a series of stages of contact. Thus,

in discussing the issue of structure, we are discussing how things are connected, contacted,

and related, and so on.

I think it is necessary to go into the Einstein Podolski Rosen story (EPR) because that is the

basic new feature of quantum mechanics, in my view. All the other developments, while

somewhat new, are not all that different from previous ideas.

The EPR story deals with the fact that the wave function which describes the quantum state

is not a function of space and time, but is a function of as many variables as there are

particles (and possibly as many moments of time as there are particles, if you tried to do it

relativistically). Einstein considered the EPR experiment to be a criticism of quantum

mechanics, showing not that it is wrong, but that it is incomplete conceptually. Something

fundamental is missing from the concepts, although the thing may be right experimentally,


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up to the present anyway.

The original experiment is a bit harder to interpret than another one. Think of two particles

forming a molecule, with the total spin equaling zero. (In classical terms you might think of

one particle spinning one direction and the other spinning in exactly the opposite direction).Now suppose that this molecule is disintegrated by electric forces which do not affect the

spin at all and that these atoms start coming apart. (Lets say they come apart very slowly.)

For the sake of argument you take them a long way apart -- miles or millions of miles -- and

all the time the total spin would remain constant. Each one would be opposite to the other.

They would be correlated. In a classical situation, if you measured the spin on one particle

after a week of separating, you would immediately know that the other particle had the

opposite spin. There is nothing mysterious about this at all -- it is just correlation. That is

obvious, at least in classical mechanics.

Now, quantum mechanics has an entirely different structure. We let a represent a particle

with spin up, b with spin down. The wave function for the combined systems is = a (1)b (2) -- a(2)b (l). This combination of wave functions with the minus sign is necessary to have a state

of spin zero (or if there is a plus sign, a spin of + 1). That is to say, the way these wave

functions are combined is essential to properties of the whole system. Let us think of any

individual particle. We say that its spin cannot be exactly defined in all directions. It can be

defined in any direction you please -- lets sayz.Then, according to quantum mechanics, the

other two components of the spin are fluctuating at random so that the spin vector is located

somewhere on a cone whosezdirection is always the same. It is not known exactly where it

is in that cone. But if we say that the particle is spinning in some other direction, then the

cone points in the corresponding direction. So there is a cone of uncertainty whose axis is in

that other direction. The quantum state of the particle thus determines the directions in which

the spin is uncertain. That is, the quantum state implies that some things are uncertain and

some are certain. The wave function determines both. The uncertainty is just as much a part

of the quantum state as the certainty.

This really shook Bohr, and for one night he couldnt sleep. However, Bohr came up with a

very nice answer. He said, "Well, Einstein, that is exactly what Ive been saying." The

trouble was that Bohr had previously been half accepting Heisenbergs view of disturbance.

Suddenly he saw that he should just give Heisenberg up altogether. Disturbance is never the

question at all in the uncertainty principle. Nothing is involved but a phenomenon. The fact

that this takes place over some time merely obscures the issue, but the phenomenon in

question is the whole of the phenomenon. This has nothing to do with time and space. Thephenomenon as a whole, however long it takes, is still just one whole phenomenon in thispattern. There is nothing to explain, because this phenomenon is an indivisible whole. There

is no inconsitency in asserting the phenomenon in this way. The inconsistency is in trying to

explain the phenomenon by our usual way of thinking in physics.

So Bohr gave a very nice answer. As a result, Einstein really knocked the last nail into the

structure when he hoped to knock it down. For afterwards everyone said, "Well, if even

Einstein cannot get away with trying to criticize quantum theory, who am I to try?"15

Now this really is the most crucial feature of quantum mechanics, which I call non-locality of

distant connections. Suppose you made a theory, for example, hidden variables, in which itwas possible to explain this in another way by saying there was a hidden force which


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connected these things. It would have implied that this force was transmitted instantaneously.

That would lead you into the problem of relativity. You might have to criticize relativity in

some way.

The other way is to have an entirely different view which is closer to the implicate order,which would question the whole idea of being interconnected in a certain way, namely, the

ordinary idea of causal connection in past and future and that things are locally connected so

that one thing affects another nearby.

You can question the ordinary idea of connection by suggesting instead that there is an inner

design in the whole structure. (In some ways this is close to what Bohr is saying, but also

different because this inner design can be studied.) The idea that all things happen

independently when they are distant is thus what I am calling into question. Experiments

have been done which in essence verify the view I am proposing up to several meters of

separation of the apparatus. One was recently done at Birkbeck College, University of

London, at 21/2 meters. There is no place where the quantum theory has been disproved up tothis separation. So it is not merely a theoretical prediction. Thus it seems that we should take

this issue of non-locality seriously.16

I think there is some new principle here which is non-local connection. Perhaps the speed of

light in this new domain is an irrelevant limitation. But Einstein may be right that the

possibility of sending a signal depends on the speed of light but not connection in general.

Sending a signal requires maintaining the order of the connection in a complex process,

because a signal depends on a whole series of steps having meaning. It might not be possible

to use non-local connection to send a signal, but still it might be a genuine connection. We

might criticize Einsteins view of signal as a basic concept for physics. To say that physics is

defined by the possibility of a signal may not be as relevant as Einstein wanted to suggest.

Rather, there are connections which are more fundamental. If there is no signal you will not

get into inconsistency with speeds faster than that of light. Therefore, the situation in physics

is pointing to some new essence.

IV. The Implicate Order

Every period of science seems to have its particular notion of order. There was the Greek

order of perfection going out to its circles of heavens. And this was given up in the

Newtonian order, which was mechanical movement. The Newtonian order was expressed

through Cartesian coordinates. The very word "coordinate" contains the word "order." TheCartesian order is highly suited to the idea of contiguous connection in classical physics.

Cartesian order has been maintained even in relativity, in its mathematics. While relativity

uses curvilinear coordinates instead of rectangular coordinates, they are still minor

extensions of the Cartesian order. We could say that even in quantum mechanics people still

use the Cartesian order to specify the wave function, even though it is describing things that

do not fit into the Cartesian order. The content is no longer Cartesian, because things jump

from one orbit to another without passing in between. Therefore, the Cartesian form has been

maintained even though the content is no longer Cartesian.

Thus, there is a contradiction arising. Indeed, if we look at quantum mechanics and relativity

together, we see that they are very different in one sense, for relativity ultimately impliescomplete, perfect describability in all the details of the universe, while quantum mechanics


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implies through the uncertainty principle that complete, perfect describability cannot be

achieved. So the attempt to define the structure of the world tube precisely in relativity would

violate quantum mechanics. That is the basic reason why quantum mechanics and relativity

do not fit together. On the other hand, they have in common this notion of unbroken

wholeness. That is, if relativity were able to explain matter, it would say that it would be allone form -- a field -- all merging into one whole. Quantum mechanics would say the same

thing for a different reason, because the indivisible quantum links of everything with

everything imply that nothing can be separated. Therefore, this notion of unbroken

wholeness seems to be the one common feature which might unite relativity and quantum

mechanics, whereas they fall apart on the attempt to describe in detail how things happen. Of

course, people have generally concentrated upon the attempt to describe things in detail, but

that is just the point at which it doesnt work very well -- when you try to understand the

quantum mechanics and relativity together.

The implicate order is the proposal of another order which will be suitable for this unbroken

wholeness, not the Cartesian order. In other words, when we have the implicate order, wewill not use the Cartesian order for the description of phenomena, except in some superficial

way. We will say that the immediate particulars are going to be the Cartesian order, but the

essential particulars will now be the new universal, or the implicate order.

The lens has been the basic instrument to give content to the Cartesian order, and the point is

the basic entity. If you have a lens, it forms very nearly an image so that to each object point

there is an image point. Since what corresponds are the points, our attention is brought to the

notion of point as the major notion. By means of the lens, we are able to see things through

point correspondences which are too small or too big or too fast to be seen by the eye. The

idea arose that eventually we would be able to see everything this way. And the universe

could be understood and observed as a structure of points.

The hologram, invented some time ago by Gabor, approached this very differently. It was

made possible by the laser, which produced highly coherent light. A half-silvered mirror

reflects some of the light to an object, and some of the light goes on. The two beams interfere

in a complicated pattern which is rather minute in its detail and doesnt look like anything at

all. You can make a photograph of this pattern and then send a similar laser light through it.

This will produce similar diffraction patterns, and you will see the whole object in three

dimensions. People have emphasized the three dimensionality of the object, but that is not

what I will emphasize here. The main point is that from each part of the interference pattern,

or hologram, you will still see the content of the whole object, but with less detail or lesspoints of view. That is to say, in each part of the hologram information concerning the wholeobject has been registered. (You can see this from the way in which the light waves from the

whole object come into each part of the hologram.) This is the key notion indicating another

order.

I should point out that the photograph is really a secondary issue, in that it helps to render the

thing visible in this way. The major point is not the photographic plate, but that there is a

movement taking place all the time. I call this the "holomovement." ("Holo" is the Greek

word meaning "whole." "Hologram" merely means to write the whole.) In this case, the

hologram takes on the form of light waves. But holograms can be made with sound waves or

with deBroglie waves, in principle, or with electron waves. And according to the theory ofquantum mechanics, all matter is wave-like, so the hologram could be of all forms of matter


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know-n and unknown.

This general category I will call "holomovement." The holomovement has the property that

each part of it contains the whole in some sense. The whole is folded into each part, and that

is why I use the word "implicate" for this order. The Latin word implicare means to befolded inward. To explicate is to fold outward. To multiplicate is to multifold, and so on.

In this order, the points are not the fundamental notion anymore. Rather, what is fundamental

is some region which contains, in some sense, the order of the whole. In ordinary physics,

this situation is described by saying that the Cartesian order is the essential order and all this

(movement, change) is merely a secondary or inessential appearance going on inside the

Cartesian order. That is the usual way of looking at it. But I am turning it around and saying

that this (the implicate order) is the essential order and Cartesian order is the inessential order

-- an appearance going on in the holomovement.

In this view, the Cartesian order is a particular case of the universal holomovement, of theimplicate order. We will develop this as we go along. One can illustrate this implicate order

in another way which is not quite as accurate, but is easier to picture.

There is a device which has been made at the Royal Institution in London, consisting of two

cylinders of glass -- one of them static and the other one turning around, with a viscous fluid,

such as glycerin, in between. You turn it very slowly so that no diffusion takes place.

Therefore, the effect is reversible when the cylinder is turned back. You put a drop of soluble

ink in the fluid, and as you turn the cylinder, the ink gets spread out in a band, and finally it

becomes invisible. It is spread all over the place. It gets drawn out. Then if you turn it

backward, it tends to draw the ink back together, and suddenly the droplet emerges more or

less as before. (It is not exactly perfect since some of the ink is diffused, but it shows the

point.)

We can say that the droplet of ink is folded up in the glycerin, like an egg folded up into a

cake. You cannot unfold the egg out of the cake because of diffusion, but you can unfold the

ink back into a droplet. You can say that there is an order here which does not show. It would

have been called "randomness" in the ordinary way of looking at it. But it is not randomness;

it is an order. If you took another droplet and enfolded it, it would look the same, but it is

different. That difference is a difference of order. Now what you could do, for example, is to

enfold a whole grid of droplets and have it look like a muddle inside. But actually there is an

implicit Cartesian order in the fluid -- an implicate Cartesian order which has been folded upinto this system. It merely shows that there is an order there which is not visible, in the sense

that the parts are enfolded into this whole. It is very similar to what happened to the light in

the hologram, where all the parts are enfolded into each part.

This is an expression of the new order, which I call the implicate order. A similar order is

involved in quantum mechanics because the waves, the deBroglie waves from each particle,

are enfolded the same way as light is.

There is a parameter here which I will call the "implication parameter." For the sake of

description, suppose you turn the cylinderntimes. You must distinguish between a drop

which has been turned n times and one that is turned 2n times, and so on. They are different.They may look the same, but they are different, because one of them can be enfolded in ii


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turns and the other in 2n turns. So we are making a distinction according to the implication

parameter. This distinction is not very important in the Cartesian order. In fact, you would

generally not consider it all. Suppose now that I take a droplet and I enfold it n times, and

then I take a different droplet and at a slightly different position enfold it n times, carrying

the first droplet two enfoldments. And I take a third droplet, which I enfold n times, whichcarries the second droplet 2n times and the first droplet 3n times. So I have enfolded a

structure of droplets.

Now if I start unfolding, one droplet after another will emerge, each in a slightly different

position. If I do it rapidly, it will appear as if a droplet is crossing this fluid. That is a

metaphor of what I mean by a particle in the enfolded order. In other words, it involves the

whole, exactly as Bohr says. In that sense we agree, but we disagree in how we describe the

whole. Every particle is actually a manifestation of this whole. Therefore, we no longer

reduce the world to particles, but we regard it as a state of the whole. We turn the classical

physics upside down.

We are saying that nothing can be understood except within the context of the whole. We

may now ask this question: "If everything is to be understood only within the context of the

whole, how are we to comprehend what happens in physics where people have so nicely and

successfully analyzed the world into parts?" We cannot ignore that experience. What we will

have to do is to assimilate and comprehend our experience in a new way. We are going to

say the old view is all appearance -- a certain appearance within this new essence.

The holomovement, which we cannot define, is going to be considered to be the new

essence. That is my primitive concept. Its meaning will unfold as we go along. The word

"holomovement" is merely a metaphor to point our mind in a certain direction. It is not to be

taken as defined in any literal sense to begin with. The laws of holomovement will be the

laws of the whole, which we can call "holonomy." Any law of the whole is a regular order

within the holomovement. If we say that the regular order is such to produce particles, that

will be a particular law of the whole. So the existence of particles is now described through

an order in the holomovement. It does not exist in itself at all. Particles are an appearance. In

fact, it is not this little thing that you see, because you are only able to see ink droplets when

they are of a certain density. We dont see the whole thing.

Now what we have is called "relative autonomy": autonomy means self-rule, and relative

autonomy is the order in which the whole unfolds. There are various orders which can be

abstracted from the whole, and these orders have relative autonomy. If you carry it farenough, you will find that these orders are not totally autonomous. They all depend on each

other. The EPR experiment is a case in point. For each particle of physics, say an electron,

you would expect a relatively autonomous order. Each particle would move along in its own

order, somewhat modified by the order of another particle which comes near it, because the

two orders penetrate together. But you would ordinarily expect that distant things should be

generally relatively autonomous. In our new view, however, things that are calleddistant

merely appearto be distant, and they are really only relatively autonomous. They all involve

the whole. Distance is thus actually an appearance by which we can describe relative

autonomy. There is no distance in this essence. Distance is not a fundamental quality of the

implicate order.

Relative autonomy is limited, as we have seen in the EPR experiment. Two things that we


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thought to be quite autonomous are not. They may be miles apart, yet are not autonomous.

Now in the holomovement, there is no reason why things miles apart should always be

autonomous. Everything comes from the whole. It may come from here; it may come from

there; but there is no reason why the order in which they come should be totally independent.

They may or they may not be independent. We would have to find out the actual fact in eachsituation. Relative autonomy is always limited. It is not the essential category. The essential

category is wholeness -- unbroken wholeness.17

I can also explain the subsistence of matter in a similar way, by saying that the

holomovement provides for the subsistence of matter. Matter continues to exist up to a point,

but it may not be perfectly subsistent. We know that matter need not be entirely self-

subsistent. Thus, there is the annihilation of particles as well as the creation. So subsistence is

not absolute.

A particle is not a substance. A substance would be self-generated and self-maintained. But

subsistence merely means that it depends on something else to be maintained. Democritussoriginal idea was that the atoms were substances -- self-maintaining and eternal. But now we

are saying that particles are subsistants and not substances. This fits the facts of modern

physics, because as I have just said, all particles can be created and destroyed and

transformed, and so on. Therefore, there is no sign that they are independent substances. We

will say that particles are orders in the holomovement, which have the character of

subsistence, a certain repetitiveness, stability, and so on. And that ties up with the autonomy,

for the order in which they are subsistants is also only relatively autonomous. This allows for

an explanation of the appearance of various things in the world which can be analyzed and

treated in themselves up to a point.

In this view, the holomovement is the essence. The order of the holomovement and not

merely the movement is the essence. Without the order, the laws of physics would be merely

empty forms, because there would be no content to physics at all.

We now have to say that the laws of physics are applying to a different order. We have to

develop this order of the holomovement. We have very little to say about it to begin with, but

we should expect that it would explain the previous orders as abstractions of various kinds,

as suggested above. It will be necessary, of course, also to develop a mathematical

description of the order along with a physical description of the order. I would just

anticipate by saying that algebra seems to provide a good mathematical description of the

implicate order and that quantum mechanics is basically an algebra. Therefore, the implicateorder will fit very nicely into the sort of thing that is happening in physics. As the calculus

was the description of the Cartesian order, the algebra is the description of the implicate

order. So the algebra must replace the calculus. Thus there are no differential equations. We

dont start with the differential equations. We do not start with the continuous space, but

instead we will say that space has no absolute order that can be described. Every order is as

good as every other order. This is a sort of extension of the principle of relativity. Einstein

showed that the order of one observers frame is as good as the order of the others. The laws

of physics take the same form in every order. But it has to be a continuous order, he said.

Now what we will suggest is that it neednt be a continuous order. For example, suppose I

say that the electron is described in terms of our own perceptual order, which is taken as

explicate. The electron has then to be regarded as enfolded in the way that I have suggested.But there might be a principle of relativity which says that the electron order could be taken


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as given or explicate and we are enfolded in the order of the electron in the same way that the

electron is enfolded in our own order. The content of the laws of physics must come out the

same whichever order we call "explicate" and whichever order we call "implicate." There is

no absoluteness to being folded or unfolded. It is the relationship of folding and unfolding

that counts. We will not say that one order is the unfolded order and the other the folded one;rather, one is folded in relation to the other.18

A. Time. If an object is thought of as being at a certain point, you have lost your mental graspof its movement. If you think of it in movement, it is not clear where it is. In movement, it

must be essentially considered over some range of time. Another way of looking at that is to

consider the usual representation of time by means of a line with past, present, and future.

You may consider this point to be moving, but that, of course, brings in time at another level.

But if we just take the present momentp, the past is gone. It is never present. The future isnot yet; it is also never present. So. ifp divides past from future, it divides what does not

exist from what does not exist. Therefore, it could hardly be said that the present exists

either. In other words, there is a complete paradox if we attempt to look at the ordinaryphysicists view of time as anything more than an abstraction. It is useful for calculation, but

is not an actual description of the state of affairs.

How are we to look at time? I would put it this way. There is no future. There is nothing but

the present and the past at any moment, because that is all that can be described. But the past

is present, in the form of memory. The past is recorded: what has been photographed and

written, the traces in the rock. It is all present. It may be unfolded in your mind as an image

that appears to be actually happening, but it is not actually happening. The past is gone.

Whatever is present of the past is an abstraction. It is not the past as it actually was. So we

will say that the past is a part of the present. Now we have an intrinsic order here, because

we can say that there is a series of moments; the later present and the present present. The

later present contains the present of this moment as a part of its past enfolded. I say that this

moment is not only present as a trace, but it is generally enfolded in the implicate order. So

the past is present, generally speaking, in an enfolded way.

This might be relevant to brain structure and memory. We may say that memory is some

enfoldment of the past in the brain. That could be a reasonable approach, in my view. That

would be a holographic enfoldment of some sort. But there is a hierarchy of order here,

because each moment has its past enfolded in it, which in turn has its past enfolded in it, etc.

Each one contains in itself what came before, which is, in turn, reenfolded. So we could look

at time as enfoldment. And we are saying that the next moment will contain all of this in asimilar way.

I would say that we dont make predictions, because in this view the present does not

determine the future, fundamentally. The future is entirely open, if I may use that word. Or to

make it more striking I could say that there is no future. It doesnt actually exist ever. Sothere is an intrinsic order of enfoldment. If you try to make a prediction, you are never sure

that something new may not come in. There is always a contingency. Therefore, literally

speaking, perfect predictions are not actually possible. Although very reliable predictions are

sometimes possible, there might still be a contingency. So I would rather say that we

anticipate the future. "Anticipate" is a good word because it comes from the same root word

as "perception." Perception means to grasp it thoroughly; anticipation means to grasp it


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beforehand.

Actually, we dont anticipate the future as such. Rather, we anticipate the past of the future.All we know of the present is actually the past. Anything known is gone already. What is

actually happening cannot have yet entered knowledge. It is being perceived. It has not yetentered the recording, the registering process. Therefore, anything that we really know is

already gone. In the future, something will have happened, and we may predict what will

have happened. So we anticipate what will have happened. That is, when tomorrow comes,

certain things will have happened, either a second ago or a minute ago, and so on. And we

will anticipate that state of affairs. Therefore, our theory (the implicate order) will consist of

relationships which, informally speaking, are always in the past of some moment which is

called the present. All language, all knowledge, I should say, must basically refer to that.

We will be discussing the unknown presently. (We really shouldnt even be discussing it.)

Given the present, the next step is completely open in principle. There may be some

situations where there is tendency for one current situation to be followed by another. In thisway we can regard the form of matter and of thought as very similar (or of feeling, as

Whitehead might have put it).

Lets look at thought. The next thought is not determined by the previous thought in any

usual causal sense. But within a thought, there will be some tendency for one thought to be

followed by another again and again. Given that a certain structure has been registered, it has

in it a tendency to react to a situation to produce a certain further structure of a similar form.

But it is not absolutely determined. Any number of contingencies come in to change it:

information, influences, and so on.

So perhaps we could say that matter has a kind of memory of what supposed to be in the

implicate order. And therefore, matter has a tendency to go on with a certain general form,

although it could change at any moment. In other words, there is always room for a creative

step outside the whole structure that we are talking about. Of course, by the time we get to

the domain of classical physics there is such an overwhelming structure of memory that it is

very well determined, but even then perhaps not absolutely. That is the way I would like to

look at the indeterminism that people have brought into the quantum mechanics.

We are going to have to abstract the order of time from the implicate order. This will come

out through the mathematics. In other words, time is not given as something there

beforehand. That is, we should not say things happen in time. Rather, there are many kinds oftime. This is the spirit of relativity. A system moving at one speed has one kind of time; one

moving at another has another kind of time. There may be an implicate time which involves

many moments of what we call ordinary time. In fact, I should say that is the kind of

experience we have of an implicate time in memory. In one moment of what we call time,

there is a vast sweep of implicate time. Usually, we take our ordinary time as the basic reality

or the essence, but it might be in the fundamental view that the various kinds of time are all

put on the same footing of interrelationship.

The point is that in the implicate order we are merely forming an order of development for

the description of process. Process is some regular proceeding order. I could here usefully

introduce the notion of a moment. The word "moment" is based on the word "movement." Itcould be thought of in a very broad sense like a moment in history, a century, a second.


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There is no particular amount of time involved in the concept of moment. I think you could

use the idea of "actual occasion" as not being merely a split second. It could be very variable.

Thus, if you think of a symphony, it has a movement which becomes another movement and

another movement. I would say that a moment is characterized by a movement -- a certain

form of movement. When we put our attention on a particular movement, we call that amoment. You see, a moment is a feature of our attention. And in the description of process

we have moments of variable size and shape and duration. These moments come about in a

series of order, which I call the implicate order -- the unfolding from one moment to the next.

That is the sort of picture I am trying to paint.

It is a matter ofartto find the right kind of moment for correctly revealing the unfolding of acertain order. If it were in music, you would have to consider using the right structure and

time to unfold a theme. If you used too short a moment, it wouldnt work; if you used too

long a moment, it wouldnt work. You cannot provide an absolute description of how to go

about it. The right use of the time becomes a sort of art. I think in music you see that most

vividly exemplified. In music, the meaning of the thing is intimately involved in the order ofunfolding.

B. Vacuum.Next, I want to discuss the question of the vacuum. This is crucial, I think, to the

whole context within which we are operating. We have called attention to the intrinsically

unknown, namely, the future. In physics, we also have what is called the vacuum state. In

quantum mechanics, any vibration does not go down to zero energy, but in its lowest state

there is its certain zero point energy. This has been verified in material oscillators of all

kinds. Also, this theory has been applied to the oscillator of empty space: oscillators of

electromagnetic field radiation.

It is basic to quantum electrodynamics to assume that each of these oscillators has a zero

point energy. Although you cannot prove this directly, you can confirm it indirectly. The

renormalization calculation equations of charge do in fact confirm that all the effects that

zero point energy ought to have are there, very precisely and quantitatively.

Now suppose that we say that this zero point energy of space is a reasonable concept. Then

one question to ask is "how much energy is there in space?" Of course, there is an infinite

amount of energy in space, because, according to present calculations, there is an infinity of

these vibrations. Eventually, that is where we run into trouble trying to get a logical or

consistent theory of the electron. Suppose we say instead that somehow the energy is finite.

We have to find some reason to cut off the theory at some new maximum frequency orshortest wave length. There is no reasonable cutoff until we come to gravitational theory.

According to Einstein, the gravitational tensorgv, determines a length asgvdxdxv. Einsteins

field equations allow you to calculate this length in classical physics. In quantum physics,

however,gv, becomes uncertain, so that such lengths will fluctuate and become indefinable.

You cannot know exactly what is meant by length or time. Therefore, all the concepts of

geometry must break down at a certain state where the frequency is so high the fluctuations

ofgv are of the same order asgv itself. At this point the length is totally uncertain. Thus the

meaning of space and time become totally undefined. This can be calculated to be a length of

about 10-33 centimeters, which corresponds to a frequency of about 1043 cycles per second.

Thus 10-43 seconds tends to be the shortest time that has meaning in the ordinary geometry

(which is really very short compared to anything we ever work with in physics thus far).


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Suppose we take this as the first reasonable place where the theory might break down. If we

do that, we can compute the amount of energy in a cubic centimeter of space, which comes

out about 1040 times the energy which would result from the disintegration of all the matter in

the known universe. In other words, the energy in empty space is immensely greater than the

energy of matter as we know it. Therefore, matter in itself is a kind of ripple in empty space.

Matter is a relatively stable and autonomous ripple in the emptiness. Those of you who have

studied the theory of solid states may not find this notion of emptiness entirely unfamiliar.

For example, in a crystal of very dense material at absolute zero, if the crystal is of perfect

order, electrons go right through it as if nothing were there.

The suggestion is then that emptiness is really the essence. It contains implicitly all the forms

of matter The implicate order really refers to something immensely beyond matter as we

know it -- beyond space and time. However, somehow the order of time and space are built

in this vacuum. That is what is suggested.

There is at present no law that determines the vacuum state. Depending on what you assume

the vacuum state to be, you will get various physical properties. And that would be very

crucial to determining what the implicate order is. In other words, I am proposing that what

is now called the vacuum state must ultimately contain the actual order of space, time, and

matt

bohm in process studies 1978

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