#explicate order

[noosphe-re]

When we look at what we call ourselves, we are looking at a rather explicate image of something which is very, very different, and there has to be a searching movement to feel out what is happening. Then the image becomes valuable as a reflection of the deeper reality. But otherwise, the image can become a source of confusion and we begin to value it too highly; it becomes ego, and we have worship of the self-image, etc. I think that science can be looked at in this way too. We get all sorts of explicit images – things that happen – but we have to look deeper to find out what underlies them. If you try to deal directly with them at their own level, then things become incoherent. You can do it up to a point, but the method is limited.

David Bohm, Wholeness, Timelessness and Unfolding Meaning, interview with Jane Clark and Michael Cohen, Beshara Magazine, Issue 14, 2020

[noosphe-re]

[noosphe-re]

[noosphe-re]

Matter is a front for a deeper order.

Ahmed Salman

[noosphe-re]

Bohm: Now, the ordinary idea of matter is: it’s an object which exists external to other objects, passes through space continuously, goes from here to there, and connects up with other objects. Makes the whole that way. Now, to just give the idea of what I mean: I saw once on BBC television a device which I realized would be very useful for my purposes. It was made at the Royal Institution in London, and it consisted of two glass cylinders, concentric, one inside the other. The inner one was held fixed, and the outer one turned slowly, and you placed a very viscous fluid such as glycerin in between the two cylinders. Now, as you turn the outer cylinder, the glycerin on the outside is turning, the glycerin on the inside is fixed, and in between it’s moving at an intermediate rate. So if you took a small bit of glycerin it would slowly get drawn out into a thread. Is that clear?

Suzuki: No, you’ve got glycerin in your tube, in your cylinder, and then you put a drop of...

Bohm: The next stage is to put a drop of insoluble ink, which consists of particles of carbon, for example.

Suzuki: So you can see this drop suspended in the glycerin.

Bohm: And each particle of carbon is now carried along by the glycerin at the speed of the glycerin. And since the outer parts of the glycerin move faster, the particles of carbon are carried apart. Eventually they become so fine as to be invisible, right? Now, you then turn this machine around slowly, and the particles retrace their paths, and suddenly it forms a drop, again, of glycerin, right? And that actually happens. I saw this happening for the first time there when it was shown on the program.

Now, I propose now that this droplet has been folded into the glycerin, right? And it is then unfolded. Now I want to say that that sort of process helps to explain the behavior of particles. It’s only an analogy; we mustn’t take it too literally. But for example, suppose I put two droplets in, one next to or near the other, and I fold it up. Now, the particles from one droplet are going to sort of mix with the particles of the other, so they’re indistinguishable. Yet, if we turn the machine around, each particle seems to know where it must go and it goes backward to help form its own droplet again, right?

Suzuki: Now, what does that illustrate?

Bohm: Well, that illustrates a new order, because… see, if we put in a number of droplets in a row, you have an order, right? And we could pull them all up. The order seems to be absent, but it’s still present, because when you unfold it it’ll all come right out again. So I say there’s a non-manifest order. There’s an implicate, enfolded order, right?

Suzuki: Okay.

Bohm: I say that that notion of order is a different notion of order from the one which science has been using, which is the unfolded or explicate order, in which we say only things outside each other count and only external relationships of things outside each other are to be part of the fundamental laws of physics.

David Bohm, interviewed by David Suzuki, 1979 (video, transcript)

[noosphe-re]

One way to express the hard problem of consciousness in Bohmian terms is to say that there seems to be nothing within the explicate order that would necessitate or make possible conscious experience. Traditional philosophy of mind and neuroscience often assume that the explicate order is all there is to the physical world, while at the same time seeking to locate consciousness to the physical world. Thus it is not surprising, from the Bohmian point of view, that the hard problem is so acute for these subjects. The key point is that the Bohmian scheme proposes that there is more to the world than the explicate order of matter, namely the implicate order and what may be beyond that. If conscious experience cannot be fully accounted for within the explicate order of matter, then there is no choice but to explore the role played by the implicate order and what may lie beyond it.

Paavo Pylkkänen, Mind, Matter and the Implicate Order

[noosphe-re]

The central new notion introduced by quantum mechanics is not indeterminism, nor uncertainty, but wholeness. This new feature has been described by phrases such as "the non-separability of spatially separated systems", or more briefly as "quantum non-locality". These terms are actually inadequate expressions of the radical implications of the notion of wholeness and reflect a strong desire to cling to a reductionist philosophy. A radically new approach is needed, an approach that does not depend upon the Cartesian Order, but requires the introduction of new orders such as the implicate order and the generative order. Mathematical descriptions of these new orders are under active development at present.It is now quite clear that if gravity is to be quantised successfully, a radical change in our understanding of spacetime will be needed. We begin from a more fundamental level by taking the notion of process as our starting point. Rather than beginning with a spacetime continuum, we introduce a structure process which, in some suitable limit, approximates to the continuum. We are exploring the possibility of describing this process by some form of non-commutative algebra, an idea that fits into the general ideas of the implicate order. In such a structure, the non-locality of quantum theory can be understood as a specific feature of this more general a-local background and that locality, and indeed time, will emerge as a special feature of this deeper a-local structure.

Relativity, Quantum Gravity and Space-time Structures, research group at Birkbeck, University of London

[noosphe-re]

I propose something like this: Imagine an infinite sea of energy filling empty space, with waves moving around in there, occasionally coming together and producing an intense pulse. Let's say one particular pulse comes together and expands, creating our universe of space-time and matter. But there could well be other such pulses. To us, that pulse looks like a big bang; In a greater context, it's a little ripple. Everything emerges by unfoldment from the holomovement, then enfolds back into the implicate order. I call the enfolding process "implicating," and the unfolding "explicating." The implicate and explicate together are a flowing, undivided wholeness. Every part of the universe is related to every other part but in different degrees.

David Bohm