A philosophical worldview or belief system grounded on the 20th century discovery that Information, rather than Matter, is the fundamental substance of everything in the universe. It is intended to be the 21st century successor to the ancient worldviews of Materialism and Idealism. An Update from Bronze Age to Information Age. It's also a Theory – of – Everything that covers, not just matter & energy, but also Life & Mind & Love.
Post 140.January 12, 2025
Wholeness and Holism
Implicate and Explicate Order
This post is my attempt to reconcile David Bohm’s quantum physics explanation of Wholeness (entanglement) with Jan Smuts’ notion of Holism (organisms) in Evolution. I’m much more familiar with the latter than the former. But they seem to be talking about the same kinds of mysterious forces & processes in Nature. In Biology, something seems to be missing in Darwin’s theory, to explain how Life & Mind could emerge from material processes, without divine intervention. In sub-atomic Physics, the missing “force” is whatever binds isolated particles into entangled pairs that have correlated properties, and mutually respond to changes without any apparent exchanges of information or energy. The pairs seem to act as a single whole object, and are interdependent. For Evolution, the missing “force” is whatever combines bits of inert matter into living and thinking organisms. In both cases, the material substrate is physically observable (explicit), but the immaterial system is only rationally inferable (implicit).
These scientific conundrums also tend to be seemingly absurd or contradictory philosophical paradoxes¹. “For Bohm certain paradoxes needed to be reconciled. For example models of existence described in conventional physics, including Einstein’s ground-breaking theory of relativity, clashed with findings of quantum physics at the subatomic level. This, for him, pointed to a much deeper non-manifest dimension of reality. Such a non-manifest world he described as the ‘implicate order’, and the manifest world as the ‘explicate order’.”² Bohm didn’t accept the unpredictable randomness at the sub-atomic level as simply a “peculiarity”. He intuited that “other factors” — which he called “hidden variables” — were involved. They are not “hidden” in the sense of “occult” pseudoscience, but merely physically “unmanifest” and known only via rational inference.
Other physicists have attempted to resolve some of the quantum queerness by inferring invisible Quantum Fields³ that are treated as real, even though they have no material properties, only mathematical-logical relationships. They would assert that there is something “physical” going on. But I would say there is something “meta-physical”⁴ happening at the foundation of Reality. It’s something we can imagine and infer, but cannot see or touch. The Field is analogous to a grid of non-dimensional points in space, that extend to infinity. Yet, mathematical and philosophical infinities are not Real, but Ideal. So quantum physics goes beyond the material stuff of the world, and intrudes upon the immaterial, mental, realm of ideas and mathematics. It goes beyond Physics to delve into Meta-Physics. Since entanglement occurs despite spatial separation, it is considered non-local⁵. Could Holism/Wholeness be the combined effect of all fundamental forces?
1. Relativity vs Quantum : Einstein’s world is relative to the observer’s frame of reference, but generally seems to be continuous & deterministic. Quantum mechanics though appears to be discontinuous and probabilistic. How can the world be both? The paradox is not in the physical world, but in the metaphysical mind that creates abstract models of reality.
2. Implicate Order : Quote from A new holistic song - a duet, by Claudius van Wyk. “The holistic perspective of David Bohm and Jan Christian Smuts”
3. Quantum Fields : If quantum fields are mathematical entities made up to explain nature, what they explain is definitely something physical and is made up of something. So why can’t there be an answer to what these mathematical quantum fields are made up of? . . . it is not really a physics question, but rather a philosophy one. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/658788/what-are-quantum-fields-made-up-of
Holistic Organization
Blog Post 140 continued . . . click Next
Wholeness & Holism
Implicate and Explicate Order
David Bohm
Quantum Physicist Jan Smuts Evolutionary Theorist
The implicate (also referred to as the "enfolded") order is seen as a deeper and more fundamental order of reality.
4. Meta-physics : Physics refers to the things we perceive with the eye of the body. Meta-physics refers to the ideas we conceive with the eye of the mind. Meta-physics includes the properties, and qualities, and functions that make a thing what it is. https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page14.html
5. Non-local nature :
The correlation between entangled particles cannot be explained by any local hidden variable theory, meaning there is no pre-determined state for each particle, and the connection is established at the moment of entanglement. ___Google AI overview
Note : Bohm’s theoretical Quantum Field Energy is Potential not Actual and Universal not Local, until actualized and realized by interaction with environment.
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