Wholeness and the Implicate Order

I rarely take the time to write reviews, but forty years after its publication, this book deserves to be far more widely read and referenced. It has tremendous implications for our understanding of science and consciousness. Even for a non-scientist, like myself, it offers a profoundly different way to understand what is going on in my own mind and direct experience.The author was a peer to the great physicists of the twentieth century, and made numerous important contributions to the intellectual edifice of that field. Sadly, due to his interest in Marxist ideas he was persecuted by the ardent anti-communists of the 1950’s (HUAC) and basically driven out of the US. Later in his career, he again defied the strict norms of the traditional physics community by engaging in extensive dialog with the Indian philosopher J Krishnamurthi. In a less conformist era or community, his ideas likely would have gained much wider and more serious traction. It is well past time for a fresh look at his amazing insights.Although this book has some technical content, his writing is extraordinarily clear and precise. I did give up on Chapter 4 about halfway through, as the math was simply beyond me. But as far as I can tell, nothing in chapter 4 is critical to the overall thesis of the book. One could go straight from chapter 3 to 5 without losing any comprehension or appreciation for the depth and subtlety of Bohm’s arguments.His first critical point comes on page 4, where he points out our tendency to conflate thinking about things with direct experience itself, or as he states: “our thought is regarded as in direct correspondence with objective reality.” The result is that any dominant way of seeing the world becomes at once both largely unconscious and a self-fulfilling prophecy. Bohm argues that in order to properly understand reality, we must “be aware of the activity of thought as such; i.e. as a form of insight, a way of looking, rather than a ‘true copy of reality as it is’.”Bohm uses the term “fragmentation” to describe the traditional Western paradigm for understanding physical reality, going back at least to the Greeks. Fragmentation has several manifestations. In academic fields, it manifests as the continual division of fields into specialities and sub-specialities. In society, people are “broken up into separate nations and different religious, political, economic, racial groups, etc.” And in physics, we have come to regard “as an absolute truth the notion that the whole of reality is actually constituted of nothing but ‘atomic building blocks’, all working together more or less mechanically.” Over time, this fragmentary worldview and the resulting empirical data have circularly reinforced each other. Obviously, the associated theories have led to many great and useful insights. But we should not lose sight of the fact that “all our different ways of thinking are to be considered as different ways of looking at the one reality, each with some domain in which it is clear and accurate.” An overly fundamentalist application of the fragmentary worldview is blinding us to see larger (or at least alternative orders) in the nature of reality and of consciousness.He then goes on to show that both relativity and the quantum theory “show that the attempt to describe and follow an atomic particle in precise detail has little meaning.” Instead, “it can perhaps best be regarded as a poorly defined cloud, dependent for its particular form on the whole environment, including the observing instrument.” He offers an alternative analogy for thinking about relatively stable and autonomous “objects” and how they relate to the broader environment: as vortices in a flowing stream (think of whirlpools in a fast-flowing brook). Viewed in a certain way, such a vortex might appear to be quite consistent and independent of other features appearing elsewhere in the stream. And yet, without the overall flow of water, these seemingly independent “things” would instantly disappear. Bohm offers a “proposal for a new general form of insight…That is, there is a universal flux that cannot be defined explicitly but which can only be known implicitly, as indicated by the explicitly definable forms and shapes, some stable and some unstable, that can be abstracted from the universal flux. In this flow, mind and matter are not separate substances. Rather, they are different aspects of one whole and unbroken movement.”All of what I’ve described is laid out in the first 14 pages! He goes on to describe and illustrate his thesis with penetrating analyses of language, key unresolved questions in physics, the nature of time, and various mathematical paradoxes. The logic is crisp and internally consistent. The breadth of both his scholarship and the conceptual landscape he covers are tremendous. In the end, he offers a whole new way to conceive of physical reality and consciousness. And although he doesn’t mention it, this alternative worldview has much in common with Eastern philosophy and the reports of mystics from all sorts of religious traditions.In short, this book provides profound insights into most of the great unanswered questions: what is consciousness?, what is time?, what is the nature of physical reality?, and so on.

This is an unusual book. Bohm was one of the deeper thinkers, and this book is a challenge to many generally prevailing views. The book commences with the concept that a theory is an insight. Bohm points out that for convenience we subdivide our studies, but then ends up with the problem that this fragmentation has led to many of today's problems, where we do not consider the outcomes (e.g. pollution) of what we do. Accordingly, his solution is to give primacy to everything as a whole. One problem with this book is that he tends to leap from one place to another, with no obvious connection, then leave it. In chapter two, he outlines what he calls the rheomode, a way of modifying words to give more precise meanings. Later, to illustrate implicate order, he gives a mathematical treatment of what he calls a metamorphosis using a hologram as an example. The problem here is, anyone unfamiliar with Green's theorem will find this incomprehensible, and at least some of those who have some comprehension will wonder why that is there. Neither these metamorphoses nor rheomodes are used subsequently.The book is a little like a hypercurate's egg. Bohm is very strong on noting problems with standard physics, and his statements regarding the inherent contradictory, and in some formulations, self-contradictory aspects of relativity and quantum mechanics are by themselves worth the price of the book. On the other hand, he then seems to state that each implies a whole, but I am not sure where that comes from. I bought the book to see from where Bohm got his concept of a quantum potential, which, in some ways seems non-physical. Unfortunately, it is just put there, without any particular explanation. Worse, it is little better than an unsupported proposition because by his own admission, it does not predict anything. Oddly, while Bohm is noted for what is generally called pilot wave theory, this is omitted. There is a chapter on hidden variables, but frustratingly, he avoids stating clearly what he means by a hidden variable. (For example, is motion in a dimension we cannot access a hidden variable?)Then comes a section where he shows why action is quantized, and from this he arrives at the Uncertainty Principle in a way that leaves standard textbooks dead. This is excellent, but not the stuff for undergraduate physics. It is also where I show my bias - I prefer to think the argument for why action is quantized should be the other way around (i.e. not if A, then B, but rather if B, then A and also....) but that is for other readers to consider. The book then covers further quantum theory, and tries to take this through, with relativity, to a whole, an implicate order. In my opinion, he goes too far, but if nothing else he is interesting.He then goes on to consider the whole. Bohm quotes Aristotle as the original holistic thinker, and claims he thought of everything as an organism. In a chapter of my ebook I discuss this issue: it is not clear exactly what Aristotle meant because he wrote in ancient Greek, and I have to rely on translations, but my interpretation is that the whole can be equated with our complete set. When Aristotle wrote the whole is more than the sum of the parts, I interpret that as the set comprises the elements (the parts) plus the rule that conveys set membership. From this you can develop mathematical logic, and Aristotle invented logic, almost completely. Bohm spends a lot of time arguing about the meaning or words, but for some reason he avoided this. The difference is very significant.To summarize, if the reader wants facts, this is not the book for you. If you want insight, it can be frustrating. If you want your mind expanded, to think about things that otherwise you may not have considered, if you want to see into a deep mind, and if you have some understanding of physics, then this is a very important book.

As others have said, this is not an easy read - I am not a physicist, nevertheless, I WAS able to 'get my head around' the concepts being presented here.I feel that this book should be read by as many people as possible - the concepts contained therein are infinitely fascinating and point to a different way of understanding that which now seems to be un-intelligible because of the very way in which we approach it. Our current way of thinking that everything is fragmented and separate leads to great misconceptions and if only we can grasp the fact that utterly everything is connected we shall have come a long way along the road to a deeper knowledge of all that is.In other words, we could come to see the great wholeness that is everything.

You'll get a more deeper understanding of his ideas here. It might be at times "technical" but it's worth going through it and dedicating time and attention to properly understand what he's talking about.Love the book.

On the wings of the spirit of Plotinus. A search for wholeness and the cascading intellectual fruits as it is approached.

What a read! Both in terms of difficulty (even forgetting the maths!) and the concepts discussed.Mr Bohm's name is deservedly uttered in the same breath as the likes of Newton, Einstein et al. and I'm not surprised that his ideas have brought about a paradigm shift in scientific thinking. The subject he tackles in this book is a big one: the universe and our place in it. This is not an easy read as he deals with abstract concepts like thought, knowledge, intelligence etc., and you may find yourself reading and re-reading chapter after chapter, but persevere....this book has answers to big questions!

Really enjoying this book! As a physics student, this offers an alternative view of the universe that makes absolute sense.