David Bohm Report: Major Sources

This source report on David Bohm is divided into five parts. Infinite Potential: The Life and Times of David Bohm F. David Peat; David Bohm's World: New Physics and New Religion, Kevin Sharpe; Quantum Implications: Essays in honor of David Bohm (ed. Basil Hiley and F. David Peat); The Search for Meaning ed. Paavo Pyllkannen; and Thought As A System, David Bohm. Within this final section, I include brief summations of some of the earlier David Bohm Seminars; I have also included some mention in these readings of Science Order and Creativity, Bohm and Peat; Changing Consciousness Bohm and Edwards; and "The David Bohm/Steven Rosen correspondence (1983)" entitled Science, Paradox, and the Moebius Principle; The Evolution of a Transcultural Approach to Wholeness. Some of these readings are appropriately referenced in various sections of this new learning agreement with Kevin Sharpe.

I Infinite Potential: The Life and Times of David Bohm F. David Peat

Introduction

Peat talks about one of David Bohm's essential characteristics. "The man Einstein spoke of as his intellectual successor was always seeking to go beyond, to transcend, to ask the next question." Regardless of the consequence Bohm, inquired into the question of truth, and in this regard Peat also points out paradoxes in Bohm's life that led to great suffering.

Peat's chronology of Bohm's life is somewhat truncated but covers the major interests. When Bohm was at Princeton he wrote a textbook on Quantum theory which clarified issues of quantum thinking that used physical argument and philosophical principles. Eventually Bohm's proposal of the implicate order drew the interest of writers, artists, psychologists, and philosophers. In the 70's and 80's he moved away from a material position and argued that information is objective, and at the end of his life Bohm took the position that nature is inexhaustible with infinite levels. The last years of his life Bohm organized dialogue circles. Overall, Peat sums up his introduction by saying that David Bohm never achieved wholeness in his own personal life.

1 Childhood From Fragmentation to Flow:

Peat talks about Bohm's childhood years and how his parents, emigrants from Eastern Europe, had difficulties that affected David throughout his life. Despite these adversities, which were quite common for emigrant families, David Bohm nurtured and fostered his innate curiosity. When he came upon an article "Skylark of Space" in the magazine Amazing Stories that caught his imagination, his subsequent involvement with Science Fiction, and its main aim of going beyond what is known, stayed with him throughout life.

An early experience of crossing a river by stepping on stones introduced Bohm to an awareness of the continuity of movement. and this experience, left him with a life long impression that was reflected in his philosophical musings. "Throughout David Bohm's life he tried to make his scientific ideas, no matter how abstract, accessible to ordinary people..." Bohm's interest in logical proofs was a first step towards his life long involvement with formal science. In high school he read about Neils Bohr's theory of the atom and came up with a solution: he imagined that electrons have tides that connected with his earlier thinking of objects emerging out of pure motion, and so, during his stay at Wilkes-Barre Bohm developed the passions of physics and politics.

2 From Penn State to Caltech

Physics was taken seriously in Europe in the early decades of this century, but was not taken seriously at Penn State. Where David Bohm found himself designing his own independent course of studies. Taking long walks in the woods and thinking on relevant issues of concern was to be his main way of learning throughout his life.

After graduating Penn State, he went on to Graduate school at Caltech but he found the general environment lacked the creative atmosphere that was suitable for his approach to learning. In this regard Peat comments on a recurring pattern in David Bohm's life.

Bohm was always the idealist, someone whose far ranging dreams and expectations could be—and sometimes were—bitterly dashed. Again and again throughout his life he would travel to a new location or enter a new university, in a spirit of hopeful anticipation only to swing back into disappointment and even depression, which would then cast its grayness over everything around him. (34)

Bohm was not interested in Caltech's approach to learning physics by problem solving, but in an understanding of the underlying assumptions. He distrusted mathematical proofs; he felt that they had unexamined assumptions. From earlier on in his scientific career Bohm trusted his intuition as a more reliable way of arriving at a solution. His colleague at Birkbeck, Basil Hiley, later commented "David always arrives at the right conclusions despite his atrocious mathematics."

While at Caltech Bohm read about detachment and the philosophy of inaction of ancient China, and wondering if this was not beginning to happen in the United States, he became discontented with his situation at Caltech and Bohm approached J. Robert Oppenheimer about attending Graduate school in Berkeley, California. Oppenheimer readily invited him into his theoretical group.

3 A Vision of Light

This move to Berkeley, California allowed for a flowering of Bohm's creativity, prompted by Oppenheimer's suggestion that he find out what happens when Neutrons and Deuterons collide. However, Peat also mentions that Bohm had a period of depression while working on his Graduate program.

Some of David's social life: Betty Goldstein-Friedan, who was to go on to write The Feminine Mystique , became a girl friend for a time, and Joe Weinberg was one of Bohm's roommates at Berkeley. Bohm and Weinberg would have on going philosophical arguments; for example, Bohm called Weinberg's emphasis on mathematical arguing "Pythagorean mysticism."

4 From Niels Bohr to Karl Marx

Peat indicates that in the earlier 1930's Marxism represented a dream for a better future, but as soon as 1938--and Peat quotes Aldous Huxley's novel After Many a Summer published in 1939--one could

"put the abolition of tsardom and capitalism in one scale; and in the other put Stalin, put the secret police, put the famines, put the liquidation of intellectuals and kulags and old Bolsheviks, put the hordes of slaves in prison camps."

David Bohm's work as a graduate student had been involved with plasmas that make up 99 percent of the universe. Peat reasons: "In his research on plasmas and in all of this work Bohm's thinking was all of a piece. It was not that he was a physicist who happened to have a great interest in politics; rather, politics and physics were for him inseparable." Science, society and human consciousness were, for Bohm, all aspects of a greater whole. In keeping with this broad interest Bohm met and became a lifelong friend of Maurice Wilkens. Much Later Wilkens had helped determine the structure of DNA and shared a Nobel prize with Francis Crick and James Watson.

After the war Bohm's creativity flowered. "Over the next few years, he tackled all the outstanding problems of his day—superconductivity, the theory of the electron gas in metals, the infinities of quantum filed theory, the foundations of quantum theory—with the absolute confidence that each case he could produce significant insights." John Wheeler who had been an assistant of Einstein's read a paper published by Bohm where he proposed the "renormalization" of the wave function at each phase of the calculation. He was so impressed that he offered him a position at Princeton.

5 Princeton

Bohm was teaching and advising graduate students with the philosophy that each person was capable of accessing creativity. Oppenheimer advised him to stay with the conventional wisdom. Weisskopf had also tried to talk with him about staying in the fold and Peat reports says that Bohm called Weisskopf a namby-pamby.

Peat talks of Bohm being like an artist: "Like a painting Bohm's theoretical inventions were free creations yet were constrained by internal laws of consistency. Their overall form was guided by his deep intuition, and by a constant correspondence between theory and the world of observation and experiment."

At Princeton Bohm lived on a rented farm house with other colleagues and students. It is interesting to note that one of the participants of their parties was the musician Pete Seeger. When I was very young, I saw Seeger playing on an educational T V station in Boston, and I was inspired to inquire into music. Bohm also met with artist Ben Shawn who lived in a nearby town. Years ago I read Shawn's book The Shape of Content which exposes biases in educational curriculums.

Peat goes on to talk about David Bohm's relationship with women. One of them was illicit and it turned out far from ideal. Peat said that Hiley interpreted Bohm's scientific endeavors to be like a helix whereas Peat saw Bohm's approach to scientific research to be like Bohm's favorite artist Cezzanne. "Perhaps it is no accident that both men were seeking to define new structures, one in painting and one in physics. For both adding something new in one area seemed to induce an immediate revision of everything else."

It was at Princeton where Bohm wrote his book on Quantum theory in an attempt to understand Niels Bohr's view on complementarity.

6 Un-American Activities

In this period of American history an anti-communism hysteria had spread, and since Bohm was labeled as dangerous by Oppenheimer because he could be influenced by others he was eventually arrested in contempt of congress. Dr. Fred Wood, who is one of my adjuncts on my school committee, told me some revealing things about Berkeley in the forties (personal communication). Many scientists working at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory would open their letters with pliers, and then drop them into the waste paper basket. They did this so that their finger prints would not be on the letters which might have been sent by those who were so oriented into communism or marxism. These scientists behaved this way because they were afraid of being implicated as communists. This is only one example of the extreme measures that were being taken at that point in time. Decades later, after one of his last depressions, he commented on how they could set up people. Fred Wood tells me that Bohm had good reason to feel that way, especially since the course of these events led him to lose his teaching position at Princeton and prompted him to go into exile.

7 Hidden Variables

During Bohm's final months in Princeton his book Quantum Theory was published in which Bohm talked about wholeness. Peat comments: "This notion of holism, which is something of a cliché word itself, had been coined in the early years of the century by the (selectively racist) South African politician Jan Smuts, but it did not really come into prominence until the 1960's in the hands of writers such as Arthur Koestler."

Peat also mentions a science fiction story that Bohm left with Hanna Loewy before his departure to Brazil. The essence of the story is about the anti-communist feeling of the day and Bohm's alienation and desire for the transcendent. Peat points out that Bohm later included in this story material arguing a need to go through the shadows for transcendence, which would lead to a transformation of humanity.

8 Brazil: Into Exile

Bohm had a great deal of difficulties with adjusting to the city life of another culture and the physics community was indifferent to his work. In commenting on this indifference Bohm mentions one of Bohr's colleagues. "Rosenfield is a confirmed positivist, so deeply confirmed that like M. Jourdain, who spoke prose without knowing it, they speak positivism without knowing it and call it dialectics."

While in Brazil, back in the states in the States students in Kansas formed a study group over Bohm's proposals. Their physics teacher Dresden was forced to read Bohm's paper and could not find any errors. He had also read von Neumann's "proof" and surmised that it did not rule out Bohm's proposal.

Peat comments on Dresden's meeting with Oppenheimer:

In January, Dresden visited Oppenheimer and asked his opinion of Bohm's theory. "We consider it juvenile deviationism," Oppenheimer replied. No one had actually read the paper—"we don't waste our time." Dresden said that he was troubled by the issue and did not know what to make of it. Oppenheimer proposed that Dresden present Bohm's work in a seminar to the Princeton institute, which Dresden did.

The reception he received came as a considerable shock to Dresden. Reactions to the theory were based less on scientific ground than on accusations that Bohm was a fellow traveler, a Trotskyite, and a traitor. It was suggested that Dresden himself was stupid to take Bohm's ideas seriously.

Included among the accusations were scientific objections that Dresden found difficult to answer. But all in all the overall reaction was that the scientific community should "pay no attention to Bohm's work." As Dresden recalled, Abraham Pais also used the term "juvenile deviationism." Another physicist said Bohm was "a public nuisance." Oppenheimer went so far as to suggest that "if we cannot disprove Bohm, then we must agree to ignore him." (133)

Peat mentions that until the 1990's there was very little mention of Bohm's hidden variables. "As Feyerabend put it, The fact that Bohm's model was pushed aside while all sorts of weird ideas flourished is very interesting, and I hope that one fine day a historian or sociologist of science takes a close look at this matter." As mentioned later Bohm's work is now being appraised by physicists and philosophers of science.

David Wick in the chapter "The Post War Heresies" Infamous Boundary: Seven Decades of Controversy in Quantum Physics (Birkhauser, 1995) also points out the difficulty of understanding Bohm's proposals.

Why does the physics community shun Bohm's realistic interpretation of quantum mechanics? Is it just rigid adherence to orthodox scripture? Although ideology undoubtedly played a role, it must be admitted that Bohm's theory was almost as mysterious as conventional quantum mechanics. In the first place, the "quantum force" acting on the electron was computed in part from the probability law of the particle's location. Since probabilities must be computed from averages over a set of experiments, it appeared that some kind of ghostly influence of the ensemble on a given one was implied. This is as plausible as suggesting that if an abnormally large number of people in my town misplace their wallets in a given day, I am more likely to lose my own. Secondly, the equation of Bohm's model are unaesthetic when compared to Schrodinger's, although this may just reflect the simplifications the square root of minus one can make in equations. And since Bohm's equations are nonlinear, one would automatically appeal to Schrodinger's when attempting to solve them. Finally, there was one prediction which, though not absurd, was hard to swallow. In the ground state of the hydrogen atom, the velocity of the electron around proton equals zero, according to Bohm. The electron just sits there—albeit at a random position. p (73-74)

F. David Peat makes it quite clear that Bohm was quite bitter over what had happened to him in the United States.

"Two years later Bohm's hostility had not abated. "I seem to have only one strong emotion left–and that is hatred for the forces that have destroyed so many human beings, including myself, For relative to what I have been, I regard myself as destroyed." He can never forgive the "American Way of Life," its selfish, cold calculation, and the conformity and insincerity that stultifies everything that is not concerned with profit." I have hated the American Way of Life, from the moment in which I was conscious of the need to take care of myself against others, from the moment in which, as a child, I had to hide books, so that people would not think I was 'abnormal' or a 'sissy'.... (136)

9 Causality and Chance

Bohm's meditations on determinism and chance led to the writing of Chance and Causality in Modern Physics published by Routledge. At that time he met colleague Mario Schonberg who introduced him to the work of Hegel. Hegel's Logic was the book that he examined over and over again. Apparently it was an inside joke with his wife Saral and colleague Basil Hiley. "What! you are packing that book again."

Peat also mentioned that by the time David Bohm left Brazil left he had created a dynamic group of Physicists who had burning questions.

10 Israel: The World Falls Apart

Peat writes of John Bell's refinement of the work that Bohm did in 1952 on Hidden Variables, this examination leading to what is called Bell's Theorem

It seems that in the 60's Bohm dropped his work on hidden variable and did not take it up again until the 70's due to the prompting of one of his graduate students Chris Phillipidis.

In Israel Bohm married his wife Saral, although the marriage was not without difficulties, they saw the relationship through to the end, and as I see it, it was a sign of integrity for both parties. They both loved Mozart, and would take long walks together. In a conversation with Hiley, he told me that he could out walk David, but Saral told me later that was possible only because of David's failing health.

Bohm always took the problems of the world on his shoulder. But after 1956 ( Soviet invasion of Hungary ) he lost much of his idealism that science or marxism could make a better world, as he came to see the nature of humanity as inherently flawed. Yet he moved to an inquiry of Hegel's insight into thought as one process, prompting Peat to comment that throughout his life Bohm exhibited this tendency to change and go deeper.

It is appropriate that Peat closes this chapter by remarking that Bohm's view of mathematics was one of striking an appropriate balance so that it might not be taken solely as the only way of knowing.

11 Bristol: Encounters with Famous Men

Bohm's fortnightly group which discussed the philosophy of science included scientists Herbert Frochlich and Paul Feyeraband. Around this time Bohm's explorations of various thinkers led him to take the position that "a cosmology of qualitatively different levels had to include a place for consciousness..." Peat argues that his new path of exploring the "ultimate" was consistent with his childhood vision and in accord with the other changes he had made in his life. Also Peat discusses the Aharonov Bohm effect. Aharonov's conjecture was that vector potential could be made manifest.

About this time Saral introduced David to The First and Last Freedom by Jiddu Krishnamurti. Apparently she had been struck by a statement by Krishnamurti that "the observer is the observed." Peat describes Krishnamurti's use of the via negativa approach: that he asked his listeners to go together with him on a journey. When the Bohms met Krishnamurt, David likened the relationship to the one he had with Einstein in the sense that they were able to explore together in the manner of an impersonal friendship. Krishnamurti and Bohm were to have many fruitful conversations over the years, and many of these conversations were published. Yet in the 1980's they seemed to have falling a way from each other and much later Peat finished his Afterword of the revised edition of Infinite Potential with a statement to the effect that we will perhaps never know what happened between David Bohm and Krishnamurti.

Peat describes how Bohm's interest in Krishnamurti's teachings connected with his other inquiries.

"In Krishnamurti's books he found a clear analysis of the nature of consciousness and the mechanism whereby the thinker separates him- or herself as a separate, independent entity. In this act of separation , and in the subsequent reification of the thinker and the thought, lie the origins of human problems. Krishnamurti's observations that "the thinker is the thought" and "the observer is the observed" struck Bohm as resembling his own—and Niels Bohr's—meditations on the role of the observer in quantum theory. Bohm had personally experience the way in which the observer of a particular thought changes the movement of thought itself. His study of Hegel had led him to similar conclusions about the movement of thought. The physicist was well prepared for his engagement with Jiddu Krishnamurti. (199)

At the end of Bohm's stay in Bristol, his long time collaborator B. J. Hiley recounts hearing Bohm first speak on his new cosmology. Eventually they were to collaborate on Bohm's work, and I assume the Birkbeck school is still involved with Bohmian proposals. On the suggestion of an old friend from California, Eric Burhop, Bohm approached J. D. Bernal head of the physics department at Birkbeck and was offered a position of a chair in theoretical physics. Bernal was an unusually broad minded person who felt that Scientists needed to be concerned with the problems of Humanity.

12 Birkbeck: Thought and What May Lie Beyond

Bohm's work had been involved with the question of causality, and another of his long term collaborators Vigier, felt that non locality violated causality. When it was clear that causality was not violated by non locality Vigier returned to work on the de broglie—Bohm theory.

The issue of thought and how it has lead to humanity's psychological decline is another Birkbeck inspired project discussed by Bohm with environmental photographer Mark Edwards in their book, Changing Consciousness: Exploring the Hidden Source of the Social, Political and Environmental Crises Facing our World. ( Harper San Francisco, 1991)

A conversation between David Bohm and impressionistic artist Charles Biederman resulted in a 4,000 page collaboration that is being edited by a former graduate student Paavo Pylkkanen. Saral Bohm told me in an E-mail communication that the B & B book will be published by Routledge in the fall of 1998. Biederman, who had been involved in impressionistic and constructive movements in art had been influenced by Alfred Korzybski's linguistic distinctions. Bohm and Biederman were seeking new orders in their respective fields. Peat represents Biederman's aim to reveal a new order.

The torch was taken up by Biederman himself, who in a series of constructions, believed he had freed painting from the two-dimensional—and brought it not into sculpture, which was purely mimetic, but into painting by means of a series of planes and rectangles arranged according to a controlled asymmetry. Most important, rejecting mimesis led not to abstraction but to the manifestation of nature's underlying structural process. Biederman wanted his work to be viewed in a natural environment so that, like Monet's "fugitive sensations" the colors and cast shadows of his structures would change during the day. Biederman claimed as the goal of his art nothing less than the transformation of human consciousness." (233-234).

Bohm saw the significance of the context dependence of Biederman's impressionistic painting much like the context dependence of a measurement or observation in quantum theory. David Peat says that Biederman's insight into language was brought out in Science Order, and Creativity. "The key to order, and to information, is difference and similarity—more specifically, collections of different similarities and similar differences." A couple of the letters that were written between Bohm and Biederman are discussed by Peat, and I found that in many respects the letter exchange I bring up below, that occurred between Steven Rosen and David Bohm Science, Paradox, and the Moeibis Principle: The Evolution of a " Transpersonal" Approach to Wholeness , (State University of New York Press, 1994 )., that is "The Bohm/Rosen Correspondence " are overall quite similar. Yet the passion that is involved between the collaborators Biederman and Bohm were not without their differences. Bohm expressed a mystical experience about his observation of George Roualt's the painting The Old Clown. Bohm felt that the painting's flow and feeling effected him in a moving way. Biederman dismissed this as a confused state of mind. Bohm's intended book on this overall collaboration which was to be titled called A Chemistry Of Thought , never came to fruition.

13 Language and Perception

Peat talks about the inevitable breakdown of communication between Niels Bohr and Einstein, finding it ironical that many of Bohm's deepest relationships-- with Oppenheimer, Krishnamurti, Biederman, and Schumacher-- had sad aftermaths.

The transformation of language is a difficult question. In Bohm's last year of life Bohm met with Native Americans whose language was verb based. He felt that they practiced ways of communication that was similar to that of the rheomode.

14 The Implicate Order

According to Hiley the idea of implicate order came out of the blue and Peat goes on to tell of his meeting and involvement with Bohm who was seeking a Holistic physics. This inquiry required seeing the limits of reality as only one aspect of a greater whole. Bohm used what appears to be the etymological derivative of truth "that which is" or "all that is" to refer to the limits of reality. When first published, Wholeness and the Implicate Order had an appeal mainly to writers, artists, musicians, psychologists and others who felt so about their own experience.

Chris Phillipidis's work revived Bohm's earlier work on hidden variables which is now called the Quantum potential. The result of a computer simulation represented this Quantum field to look like a landscape, and a quantum potential was undiminished by distance. Therefore Bohm and Hiley agreed in the 80's that their work was an ontological interpretation of Quantum events. Ontology means the way things really are; Bohm liked the neutrality of the word ontological as it had no previous associations within the physics community. Bohm and Hiley also worked on prespace—an order that exists below the level of elementary particles and precedes the notion of space. Bohm saw Grassman's algebra of thought as working towards an algebra of pre-space.

Lee Nichol, a former teacher at the Oak grove School, became close to David Bohm. Nichols was confused about his role as a teacher, and Bohm said "you must tell children how to behave but not how to be." This remark depicts Bohm's idea of the difference between a paradox and a contradiction: A contradiction involves two things that cannot fit together, while a paradox which appears at first sight to be a contradiction, on closer examination has a resolution. Bohm used the term of proprioception as an analogy of people seeing the limitations of thought together and he believed that the process of group dialogue would develop a proprioception of thought.

15 Dialogue and Disorder

Peat mentions that Bohm was inspired by Patrick de Mare to explore Group dialogue and remarks that their book Science Order and Creativity was put together in such a spirit. Another book they were working on, but that they never completed was to have been called The Order Between:; the dissolution of duality was the aim of this exploration. Bohm argued that dualities were traps of the mind, non negotiable positions between individuals and nations and therefore blocks to creativity. Bohm felt that problems should be solved upstream; that the dialogue process was active information (more generally active meaning), which Bohm argued was objective; and that it would solve the misinformation of society upstream at its source. Bohm and colleagues worked on the bugs to this question of dialogue with Ojai being a laboratory. I also talk somewhat about the David Bohm Seminars in Ojai when I address Bohm's Thought As A System below. Peat also mentions that Bohm had slipped into a depression.

16 The Edge of Something Unknown

F. David Peat asserts that David Bohm's grail was wholeness, not any kind, but one that was subtle with all the ramifications of that connotation. "Bohm genuinely believed that dialogue could make a difference. They would help resolve conflicts by moving directly to their roots and act, in a non local way, on human society. Now however, in the light of global events, his approach seemed futile, and he questioned the value of this work." The value of this dialogue experiment is an on going question that people who are still involved with this experiment have addressed. I find that sometimes the experience of dialogue and the analogy of the proprioception of thought (even if just a glimpse) will give us enough of an understanding to make a difference that will bring about a qualitative change in our beings. At other times any chance of 'Bohmian' dialogue making headway into insight seems slim to me. Peat goes on to describe Bohm's depression and what ensued from that experience. Hiley said that Bohm was never the same after he got out of Bedlam. There is one bright moment that happened at The Fetzer Institute. Peat and Leroy Little Bear, a Blackfoot philosopher had organized a circle between Western Scientists and Native Americans. "When they heard of Bohm's presence they made him quest of honor and treated him as a quest of honor and treated him as a distinguished elder." The Native Americans, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Ojibwa, Micmac, and Soto shared their way of communicating with nature. They conveyed their process based world view where every event is perceived in flux. "The Bohms were moved by the deeply held spiritual outlook of the participants." Bohm joined in on the drum ceremony and danced to the "heart" beat of the drum.

Book Reviews on F. David Peat's Biography

John Barrow's review "The Curse of Spirit" (New Scientist, 1996 ) does an admirable job of pointing out the approach that Peat used in the organization of this book. However, some of Barrow's interpretations are questionable to me. For example, when he writes about Bohm's desire to unify thought and experiment.

He pursued this goal throughout his life with an intensity that ultimately proved self-destructive.

It's not clear to me that Barrow has it right because Bohm was working in a creative way until the day of his death.

And again at the end of his review Barrow has it:

From that time on he turned increasingly to mysticism in search of a deeper explanation of the world, but his introspection led him in circles, and Bohm spiraled into a cycle of depression and frustrated searching. Ultimately he became disenchanted and suffered a mental and physical breakdown...

My conjecture here is that Peat could have presented those events in a way that made it clear that David Bohm might have had his doubts and difficulties, but such is a far cry from going around in a delirious circle.

In the Afterword of the paperback edition of Infinite Potential, Peat tried to include more information regarding of Bohm's unusually self critical reflective mind, but in a way it only made matters worse.

Sheldon Goldstein, a mathematician from Rutgers University, reviewed Peat's biography "A Theorist Ignored" (Science, 1997). Goldstein talks about how Bohm's theories of hidden variables/quantum potential were ignored and has some criticism of Peat's interpretation of the relevant physics. Peat says that Bohm did not develop the full implication of his proposals until the 1970's or 1980's. Goldstein comments "All these things were dealt clearly, I would say almost definitively, in Bohm's original 1952 articles. Goldstein concludes his review of Peat's biography: "As John Bell remarked (Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987, p. 191), the de broglie-Bohm "idea seems...so natural and simple, to resolve the wave-particle dilemma in such a clear and ordinary way, that it is a great mystery...that it was so generally ignored."

If a biography can be considered to be a map of someone’s path through life, then mapping out Bohm's must be a particularly daunting affair. What symbols and contours for instance could adequately image a thinker who insisted that images have a capacity to delude? How would a biographer fix the identity of a subject who warned against the illusion of capturing an essence? A purely scholarly biography of Bohm would be duty bound to square up to such paradoxical and problematic issues. If in addition it sought to register some solidarity with his views, then it would also have to resolve the added complication of being critical of its own analysis. (592)

Phillippidis seems to feel that Peat side stepped these constraints. He concludes: "Peat's book is an important and welcome attempt to begin the process of reconstructing a complex personality that has hitherto appeared paradoxically fragmented and incomplete."

In the John Brigg's interview with David Bohm (New Age Journal, 1989) Bohm quotes a poem that inspired him to transcend the provincialism of his small town of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

The night has a thousand eyes

And the day but one

Yet the light of the bright world dies

With the dying sun

The mind has a thousand eye's

And the heart but one

Yet the life of a whole life dies

When love is done

  Francis Bourdillon

II. Kevin Sharpe's David Bohm's World: New Physics and New Religion.

Kevin Sharpe's work is concise and well referenced. Dr. Sharpe even has a citation for Alex Gerber's (adjunct on my committee) dissertation thesis "The Educational Philosophy of Buckminster Fuller." Dr. Gerber's is referenced in relationship to Bohm's work on education. I'll touch mainly here upon some of the points that Kevin Sharpe makes which furthered my understanding of David Bohm's perspectives.

In Chapter 2: "Bohm's Hidden Variables and Quantum Potential Theories Continued," within the section about Doubts about Bohm's Hidden Variables/Quantum Potential Theories, Dr. Sharpe talks about the pros and cons of Bohm's Hidden Variables/Quantum potential Theories. He states that Bernard d' Espagnet had reservations about Bohm's contentions being experimentally evident in the field of physics, yet d' Espagnet talks about the value of Bohm's philosophical implications. As Bernard d'Espagnet also states (Quantum Implications : Essays in Honor of David Bohm) "In other words, it makes us aware of the force of Einstein's assertion that what is most basic in physics is not the mathematics but rather the set of the underlying concepts."

With regards to the difficulty David Bohm had with his proposals at that time, Sharpe quotes William Honig: "I remember that the subject of complete support for quantum theory was then an anathema because of the prevailing climate of the opinion, and it was impossible to even complete a sentence on this subject without it being banished from the conversation."

In response to Toulmin's suggested criteria which Bohm needs to meet in order to have forged a breakthrough by his colleagues, Sharpe mentions one telling issue that Toulmin overlooked: Bohm's challenge may interest younger physicists more than older ones. And he reminds, us that "the Birkbeck physicists were closing over inadequacies in their theory." Since Bohm's death Basil Hiley, a long time collaborator, continues to work on the elaboration of Bohm's implicate order proposal. For example, see his article entitled ("The Algebra Of Process." (Imprint Academic, 1994). Hiley also is currently working on questions related to pre-space.

I had often wondered why Bohm was using Spinor algebra for his description of the implicate order, and then I reread The Looking Glass Universe: the Emerging Paradigm of Wholeness by Briggs and Peat (Simon & Schuster, 1984). It appears that "Clifford algebra (curved space like the way hills look) derives most recently from Grassman's algebraic description of thought's process as one related motion." Kevin Sharpe clarifies this in Chapter 4: The Holomovement, within the section "Mathematical Models". There were several reasons for the use of algebra. "The first was that a continuum with its division of space into points with volume is not a basis for an algebra. Second, an algebra is at the mathematical root of quantum physics. Third, it allows for two different operations, addition and multiplication, which together can describe sequences of events as well as interactions between them."

This appears to be an outgrowth of his central thought in his section, Doubts about Bohm's Hidden Variable Quantum Potential Theories: Chapter 2: "In the final analysis experimentation is where the weight for verification lies."

I did a cursory survey of the most recent literature, and it appears that David Bohm's work is still being examined in the community of physics and philosophy of science. David Albert "Bohm's Alternative to Quantum Mechanics" (Scientific American, 1994) claims that David Bohm's work is now being taken more seriously in Physics than ever. David Bohm's proposals were recently addressed by philosophers and physicists in The Monist: "Quantum Mechanics and the Real World" (January , 1997 ), and Bohmian Mechanics and Quantum Theory: An Appraisal (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996). And in an interview I read with Basil Hiley, he mentioned Peter Holland's The Quantum Theory of Motion: An Account of the de Broglie-Bohm Causal Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (Cambridge University Press, 1993).

Another experiment of an alternative view to the implicate order may soon be done. It is mentioned in Ervin Laszlo's The Whispering Pond: A Personal Guide to the Emerging Vision of Science' (Element, 1996). It appears that The second Russian Academy of Science proposal is to test a current theory of the "Quantum-Vacuum" in which theoretically there exists a type of wave motion in the Q.V. that travels faster than the speed of light. The Russians plan to use a Mars probe in 1998 to send two waves back to Earth. from Mars. One light wave traveling at the velocity of light, c, and second a "Torsion wave" generated by a microwave generator, at nine times the velocity of light. Theory indicates the Torsion wave should reach Earth 8 minutes before the light wave. Thus a "quantum-vacuum" can be tested by Scientific experiment. If this experiment were to turn out to be evident, it is interesting what would emerge in the community of discourse among physicists. Especially in Chapter 6: Relating Science and Theology, in the section "The Ladder Model for the Science-Theology Relation," Dr. Sharpe proposes a ladder model that is essentially one system with different aspects of development as understanding emerges from the Science-Theology conversation. In this ladder model proposal the rungs of the ladder are what science and theology have in common. Sharpe's proposal relates to the complementarity model with appropriate distinctions emerging from the conversation between these different aspects that are one system. Bohm intended that there be conversations between Science and Theology, and other areas of concern. And an appropriate example of another important area of inquiry are the ecological-environmentally concerned who shun organized religions; these are most prominent as the readers of The Whole Earth. Recently Peter Warschall has pointed out in an article "The Spiritual Labor of Whole Earth Healing" (Whole Earth Review, Winter 1997) that the word ecumenical means the inhabited world, and is from oikos which means household or dwelling place., It's more commonly known as ecology and economics. He posits that ecumenical = the Big House, home for all clans, creatures and religions. I found Warshall's interpretation of ecumenical relevant. Perhaps some of the readers of The Whole Earth Review would be interested in conversing with theologians.

In Chapter 7, The Birkbeck Metaphysics and Christian Theology, in the section "God in Bohm's Metaphysics" Dr. Sharpe talks about God in the holomovement. When I muse over Bohm's thinking, I find myself having to pay attention to this idea, which I fall back into: that the universe is divine. As Sharpe points out, Bohm would say that divinity is beyond the holomovement. "In Bohm's view God is beyond the holomovement, he regards the universe like any theory it is incomplete and depends on what lies beyond it." Sharpe notes Bohm's approach--God being beyond the holomovement-- is along the lines of Christian theologian Karl Barth's thinking. On my own initiative I tried to read Epistles to Romans (Oxford University Press, 1933). Although I was intrigued that Barth was so inspired to utter such pronouncements, I found it difficult to understand that part of his discourse which seemed to be about the ineffable. Did David Bohm have a view about Christianity? In Changing Consciousness (Harper San Francisco, 1991) David Bohm replies to Mark Edwards statement that he has difficulties with Christianity.

DB: "The defense of social assumptions can lead to the ultimate violence, to war to murder, and to oppression, along with the most extreme self-deception and general decay of society and of the individuals who make it up.

ME: It is often hard know to what our basic assumptions are, whether these be individual or collective, for we are not generally aware of them. For example, I find great difficulty with Christianity. Is this the result of an assumption?

DB: I think so. Your attitude to Christianity clearly must be strongly affected by your assumption; perhaps something about Christianity makes you suppose that it is bad. Moreover, Christianity may have similar assumptions about atheists, as Moslems may have about adherents of other religions. There may be an assumption that my religion or my lack of religion is right and that yours is wrong. Such assumptions are shared by many people as a rule, and as you just said, they are very hard to question, indeed, to be conscious of, as we've been saying, you simply react with a conditioning reflex according to your assumptions. (164)

III. Quantum Implications: Essays in Honor of David Bohm ed. by Hiley and Peat

I have read every contribution but I shall delimit a significant amount of the contributions that pertain to the mathematical aspects of Dr. David Bohm's physics and represent a brief record of the contributors. Reading Quantum Implications helped to give me a background of David Bohm and his colleagues.

1 General introduction: The development of David Bohm's ideas from the plasma to the implicate order.

In this introduction the editors give an overview of the contents of their book. They mention that Bohm's original view of seeing the interconnections in nature were rather vague. As Bohm's reformulations of Quantum Mechanics in 1952 were connected to his notion of the implicate order, the editors asked him to write an article about the connection between his earlier idea in relationship to his implicate order analogy. The editors specifically quote Eugene Gross

Eugene Gross, one of Bohm's first graduate students has said of him: "a totally unselfish man who shares his latest thoughts on many topics with his colleagues and students alike. This enthusiasm for the search for order in nature continues unabated today."

Hiley and Peat elucidate on the response to his work by other physicists. Born writes,

Pauli has come up with an idea that slays Bohm. An examination of Pauli's article in Louis de Broglie, physician et penseur reveals a criticism. that can only accuse the alternative approach of being 'metaphysical' ; a word nowadays, together with the word 'philosophical,' is used as a derogatory euphemism to condemn a theory which doesn't fit into the common consensus.

The situation has been summarized very succinctly by Bopp: 'we say that Bohm's theory cannot be refuted, adding, however, that we don't believe it.'

The editors describe Bohm's response to his critiques

Bohm to answer the more general criticism presented his own ideas in a broader context in his book Causality and Chance in Modern Physics This book showed that Bohm was not only a master in handling the mathematical tools used in physics but that he could also think deeply about the philosophical background implicit in the physicist's framework.

In his final chapter he raised the possibility of a more general concept of physical laws that went beyond mechanism. He suggested that the notion of the qualitative infinity of nature in which all theories have limitations in their domains of validity so that every theory must be qualified by its context, conditions and degrees of approximation to which they are valid. ( 8-9)

Hiley and Peat summed up their tribute:

Clearly David Bohm's ideas have influenced a wide audience and stimulated much discussion which helped to create new insights and lead to an essentially unified vision of nature in which artist, scientist and religious thinker are no longer divided. Even more significant, perhaps, is the hope that individuals may come together in a spirit of creative co-operation to build a world in which undivided wholeness and creative order are an essential ground.

2 Hidden variable and the implicate order David Bohm

David Bohm talks about the relationship of his work on hidden variables and the implicate order which the editors describe so: . "He wrote his book Quantum Theory based on Niels Bohr view on complementary. He was dissatisfied with the inability of quantum theory to go beyond the phenomena of appearances, and at Einstein's request, he discussed the book with him and said that he was not convinced of Niels Bohr's point of view as deterministic. This meeting with Einstein motivated him to inquire further about a deterministic interpretation of the quantum theory."

Bohm states:

What would happen, in the demonstration of this equivalence, if we did not make this approximation? I saw immediately that there would be an additional potential, representing a new kind of force, that would be acting on the particle. I called this the quantum potential, which was designated Q.

Bohm explains that "This led to what he called a causal interpretation of the quantum theory. His basic assumption was that the electron was a particle that acted on the classical and quantum potential. He sent a prepublication copy of his work to physicist De Broglie who replied saying that Pauli had severely criticized it. After taking into account Pauli's critique Bohm later on talks about non-locality..." "In fact it was just this feature of the quantum theory as brought out in the causal interpretation that later led Bell to develop this theorem, demonstrating quite precisely and generally how quantum non locality contrasts with classical notions of locality." Bohm's accounting is quite precise:

To sum up, then, the quantum potential is capable of constituting a non-local connection, depending directly on the state of the whole in a way that is not reducible to a prearranged relationship among the parts. It not only determines organized and co-ordinated activity of whole sets of particles, but it also determines which relatively independent sub-wholes, if any, there may be within the larger whole. I want to emphasize again how radically new are these implication of the quantum theory They are hinted at only vaguely and indirectly by the subtle arguments of Bohr, based on the usual interpretation of the quantum theory as nothing more than a set of mathematical formulae yielding statistical predictions of the phenomena that are to be obtained in physical observations. However, by putting quantum and classical theories in terms of the same intuitively understandable concepts (particles moving continuously under the action of potential), one is able to obtain a clear and sharp perception of how the theories differ. I felt that such an insight was important in itself, even if, as seemed likely at the time that I proposed it, this particular model could not provide the basis for a definitive theory that could undergo a sustained development

He goes on to say that although he did not have a definite theory for a sustained development. However a clear intuitive understanding of the meaning of one's ideas can often be helpful in providing a basis from which may ultimately come an entirely new set of ideas, dealing with the same content.

(38-39)

In the 1960's Bohm became interested in order and language through his collaboration with he with the artist Charles Biederman, who in turn was influenced heavily by the semanticist Korzybski-- and through working with a student, Donald Sutherland. As a consequence he wrote a paper pointing out that the relativistic and quantum notions of order contradicted each other and that a new idea of order was needed. Bohm got the idea of new notions of order from a BBC program which showed an ink drop being spread through a cylinder of glycerin. The connections between the motions of a hologram and this cylinder possessed an enfolded order, and such a universal motion of unfoldment and enfoldment Bohm was to call the holomovement.

Bohm reasons: "the whole is internally related to the parts and that the implicate order was an image, a metaphor for the understanding the implication of wholeness." Thus "What is missing in these analogies is an inner principle of organization in the implicate order which determines sub-wholes that shall become actual and what will be their relatively independent and stable forms..."

Bohm continues "At first sight, the causal interpretation seemed to be a step backwards toward a mechanism, since it introduced the notion of a particle acted on by a potential. Nevertheless as I have already pointed out, its implications that the whole both determines its sub-wholes and organizes their activity clearly goes far beyond what appeared to the original mechanical point of departure." Bohm's points out that the mechanical point could conceivably be dropped by proposing a field that acts like a collection of particle and wave like manifestations. He gives the examples of interference and diffraction.

Bohm elaborates "All this flows out of the super-quantum potential, which depends in principle on the state of the whole universe. What we have here is a kind of universal process of constant creation and annihilation determined through the super-quantum potential so as to give rise to a world of form and structure in which all manifest features are only relatively constant, recurrent and stable aspect of the whole."

"But now, this whole field is no longer a self-contained totality; it depends crucially on the super-quantum potential. As we have seen, however, this in turn depends on the wave function of the universe in a way that is a generalization of how the quantum potential for particles depends on wave function of a system of particles."

"This implicate order is immensely more subtle than that of the original field, as well as more inclusive, in the sense that not only is the actual activity of the whole field enfolded in it, but also all its potentialities , along with the principles determining which of these shall become actual.''

Bohm states that there can be an infinite number of implicate orders and he considered the second implicate order as standing in relationship to the first as a source of formative, organizing and creative activity.

3 Collective variables in elementary quantum mechanics Eugene Gross

One of Bohm's' first graduate students talks about his long walks while elaborating their work punctuated with many stops in the coffee shops. Gross mentions that they looked up an article on the Holy Trinity in the Catholic Encyclopedia and noticed how similar the language is to Bohr. He gives this moving statement

Finally I can only use old-fashioned language to describe his impact on me and others. Dave's essential being was then, and still is, totally engaged in the calm passionate search into the nature of things. He can only be characterized as a secular saint. He is totally free of guile and competitiveness, and it would be easy to take advantage of him. Indeed, his students friends, mostly younger than he is, felt a powerful urge to protect such a precious being. Perhaps the deep affection of his many friends helped to sustain him in the difficult years of early 1950's. (48-49)

4 The Collective description of Particle interaction: From Plasmas to The Helium Liquids David Pines

David Pine says plasma was named by Irving Langmuir, and talks about how the highly ionized gases as found in the ionosphere are highly organized with thousands of particles that are coherent. Pines mentions that Bohm and he were interested in the behavior of electrons in metals. "The intent was to harness the power liberated in the fusion of these light atoms at high temperatures, and he also stated that this was an example of a many-body problem..."

Pine comments "In any approach to understanding the behavior of complex systems, the theorist must begin by choosing a simple, yet realistic, model for the behavior of the system in which he is interested.

We have argued that the organized behavior of the plasma is of considerable interest. What makes the plasma a particularly interesting object of study is its schizophrenic behavior, depending on the stimulus, it will display either collective or individual behavior; of the kind we have discussed."

Pine says that their problem was to construct a theory of metals in which their existence was explicitly recognized. "Because in the conventional mathematical formulations the only variables which appear are those which describe the motion of single electrons, it was necessary first, to find the collective variables which described plasma waves, and, second, to devise a mathematical formulation in which both collective and individual particle variables appeared. In other words we had to first invent a new language, and second to find a way to apply that language to the problem on hand."

Pines closes his paper with a moving statement in the Afterword:

It gives me great pleasure to contribute this article to a festschrift which honors David Bohm, who taught me many of the concepts that I have described herein as a teacher, collaborator and a friend. David Bohm introduced me to the primacy of physical ideas and physical intuition on physics; he taught me the importance of examining a given problem from many different perspectives and of using whatever mathematical techniques are needed to test physical ideas. I am grateful for his initial guidance not only in doing theoretical physics, but in a way of working as theoretical physicist. p (84)

5 Reflections on the quantum measurement paradox A. J. Leggett

Most of what is said here is far afield from my understanding. Some of the statements by Leggett I found worthy of further reflection.

"The wave function it is claimed describes particular macroscopic objects not ensembles, and is never 'reduced' by a measurement, even at the level of human consciousness; thus the universe is never 'really' in a particular macroscopic state at all but is forever in a linear superposition of macroscopically different states." (97)

"It is quite simply that the assumption that the laws of quantum mechanics apply to macroscopic, complex and possibly highly organized systems of matter, in the same way as they do to microscopic objects such as electrons and atoms, is just that: an assumption, for which at the time of writing there is no direct and little circumstantial evidence. Perhaps the easiest way to see this is to note that the only time that the average physicist ever needs to write down a wave function of the type[3] is precisely when he is discussing the quantum measurement paradox; in his ordinary working life, be he a theorist or an experimentalist, he never needs to deal with superpositions of macroscopically different states, and hence never produces any evidence either for or against their existence. (97-98)

He states "With few exceptions (who include David Bohm), scientists of the last 300 years or so have been deeply committed to a form of reductionism which holds, in effect, that the behavior of a complex system of matter must be simply the sum of the behavior of its constituent parts."

Summing up Leggett acknowledges Bohm's concern of the fragmentation of a world-view due to imposition of orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics."

6 Quantum physics and conscious thought: Roger Penrose

Sir Roger Penrose, whose most recent thinking I listened to a couple of years ago at the University of Washington writes: "This viewpoint put forward attempts to relate questions to Bohm's interest; breakdown of quantum mechanics on a macroscopic level and physical basis of consciousness..." In Penrose's own words "Like Einstein and his hidden-variable followers, I believe strongly that it is the purpose of physics to provide an objective description of reality."

The elegance and profundity of general relativity is no less than that of quantum theory. The successful bringing of the two together will never be achieved, in my view, if one insists on sacrificing the elegance and profundity of either one in order to preserve intact that of the other. What must be sought instead is a grand union of the two - some theory with a depth, beauty and character of its own ( and which will be no doubt recognized by the strength of these qualities when it is found) and which includes both general relativity and standard quantum theory as two particle limiting cases. (112)

I am grateful to P. Pearl for the illuminating discussion concerning this. Quantum reduction must be a non-local process, and the hope is that this non-locality can be matched with the non-locality involved in the gravitational entropy concept. It will be clear to the reader that there is much speculation and lack of precision in this picture... But my purpose here is not to spell out in detail how the reduction procedure might work (which I cannot do, not having a proper theory) but merely to attempt to persuade the reader of the plausibility of there being some new physical processing going on which has a perfectly objective character, even though we do not understand how this process works in detail. I would certainly anticipate, however, that the processes are likely to defy any meaningful local description in ordinary space-time terms. (114)

Penrose in response to the idea of a computer passing the Turing test and taking on the attributes of consciousness and its content.

However Searle has argued impressively that answers of the sort need in no way imply that any 'understanding' has actually been achieved by such mechanism since, in place of the electronics of the computer, one could use human beings blindly following instructions and they need have no inkling of the 'meaning' of the story in order to carry out these instructions successfully. Penrose says that even if the Turing test is passed by programmed computers we would still ho no reason to attribute the them such qualities as conscious awareness. (115)

Penrose talks about his own view

My own personal view is very much in sympathy with this, thought it remains what I believe to be a highly significant difference. I would agree that the actual physical construction of the proposed 'thinking devise' is likely to be crucial, but not merely w.'. I think that the physical (or biological) nature of the 'devise' is likely to be crucial also in determining the effectiveness of its very operation. I would contend that the evolutionary development, through natural selection, of the ability to think consciously indicated that consciousness is playing an active role and has provided an evolutionary luminary advantage to those possessing it.

(116)

He talks about consciousness being functional and then about the qualities that would need conscious awareness. "On the other hand, 'common sense', 'judgment of truth', 'understanding' and 'artistic appraisal' are among the terms one might use to describe mental activities that can seemingly be carried out effectively only when consciousness is present. For these, one is much more in the dark on attempting to imitate human thinking with computers."

The last statement made by Penrose:

These ideas are, of course, matters of considerable speculation, as present physical and physiological understandings go. Yet there are very many instances where biological systems have been able to make extraordinarily effective use of subtle physical or chemical effects. Surely the greatest of evolution's achievements, the development of conscious awareness must have needed to call upon physical processes even more profound and delicate than any we yet understood. Any world in which minds can exist must be organized on principles far more subtle and beautifully controlled than those even of the magnificent physical laws that have so far been uncovered. At least, that is my own very strong opinion. p (118)

7 Macroscopic quantum objects T. D. Clark

Clark says, "In 1962 Josephson invented what is now known generically as the superconducting weak link. In its simplest form the weak link consists of a tapered construction roughly a few hundred angstroms across at its narrowest section. This corresponds closely to the penetration depth lambda in a superconductor.

Fortunately, with modern liquid-helium cooled electronics, based on gallium arsenide GaAs devices this is now a perfectly practicable proposition..."

8 Meaning and being in Contemporary Physics Bernard d' Espagnat

Kevin Sharpe in David Bohm's World : New Physics and New Religion (Bucknell, 1993) points out that d'Espagnet has reservations about Bohm's contentions being experimentally evident in the field of physics. Here d'Espagnet talks about the value of Bohm's philosophical implications. " In other words, it makes us aware of the force of Einstein's assertion that what is most basic in physics is not the mathematics but rather the set of the underlying concepts."

He talks of Heisenberg.

"In his book Physics and Philosophy , Heisenberg, for instance, considers that a statement 'can be made objective' if we may consistently claim that its content does not depend on the condition under which it can be verified. and when he then defined several varieties of realism, he dismisses as meaningless any 'metaphysical 'realism' ( this is the expression he used) that would not reduce either to what he calls practical realism or to what he calls 'dogmatic realism'; that is, to a conception asserting that most or, respectively, all of our meaningful statements about the natural world can be 'made objective', in the sense just specified. (154)

"Heisenberg makes verification the primary concept that refers to the actions of men..." D'Espagnat contrasts the aforementioned approach of Heisenberg with John Wheeler "In Wheeler's paper the ultimate referent is 'meaning', a concept for which Follesfdal's definition 'Meaning is the joint product of all the evidence that is available to those whose communication is taken..."

9 Causal Particle Trajectories and the Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

J.-.P Vigier, C. Dewdney P. R. Holland and A. Kyprianidis

Vigier, who is an experimental scientist, was one of David Bohm's main collaborators. I represent some of the views of the authors.

"In Bohr's view the 'observer' plays no more a special role in quantum mechanics than in any other area of knowledge, and his or her consciousness of a given has no special effect... The causal interpretation originally proposed by de Broglie extended by Vigier to include a sub-quantum Dirac ether as an underlying principle model. The quantum potential approach provides a way of understanding the feature of the quantum wholeness of phenomenon emphasized by Bohr. Yet we are not required to relinquish the attempt to explain the interpret phenomena in terms of space-time co-ordination and causal connection simultaneously. The non-separability of quantum systems had been emphasized by Schrodinger and Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen. in 1935. That such non-local considerations exist can no longer be doubted, as the results of Aspect's experiment demonstrate. Indeed these experiments fine a perfectly causal explanation through the quantum potential..."

Vigier's causal interpretation does not bring in the mechanical classical world view

The lesson of Bohm's work are clear. We can adopt Bohr's idealist epistemology and deny the very possibility of analyzing what happens within quantum phenomenon such as neutron interference.

The interpretations of Bohr and de Broglie-Bohm-Vigier both emphasize that the fundamentally new feature exhibited by quantum phenomena is a kind of wholeness completely foreign to the post-Aristotelian reductionistic mechanism in which all of nature in the final analysis consists simple of separate and independently existing parts whose motions , determined by a few fundamental forces of interaction, are sufficient to account for all phenomena. The difference arises in the methods for dealing with the situation. One thing however is clear; the organization of nature at the fundamental level is far more complex than mere mechanistic models can encompass. the ghost cannot be exorcised from the machine.

(200-201)

10 Irreversibility, stochasticity and non-locality in classical dynamics

Ilya Prigogine and Yves Elskens

Prigogine argues in this paper that what is unique about David Bohm is his deep involvement with epistemological problems. He then quotes Karl Popper "There is at least one philosophic problem in which all thinking men are interested. It is the problem of cosmology: the problem of understanding the world - including ourselves and our knowledge, as part of the world."

11 The Issue of Retrodiction in Bohm's theory

Y. Aharonov and D. Albert

In short Aharonov and Albert state "Bohm's aim with hidden variables was to produce a theory with logically clear foundations retrodiction—that we can know more of the past's of quantum systems that their futures."

12 Beable for quantum field theory J. S. Bell

John Bell was an experimental physicist who was motivated by David Bohm's 1952 position paper on hidden variables. He insists that his concern is professional: "I think that conventional formulations of quantum theory, and of quantum field theory in particular are unprofessionally vague and ambiguous." Along the lines of Bohm's approach he asks, "why not try and find clarity..."

13 Negative Probability Richard P. Feynman

Feynman articulates about tacit assumptions and the exploration of negative probabilities.

The use of negative numbers as an abstract calculation permits us freedom to do our mathematical calculations in any order, simplifying the analysis enormously and permitting us to disregard inessential details. The idea of negative numbers is an exceedingly fruitful mathematical invention. Today a person who balks at making a calculation in this way is considered backward or ignorant, or to have some kind of mental block. It is the purpose of this paper to point out that we have a similar strong block against negative probabilities. (236)

14 Gentle Events as the Source of Explicate Order G. F. Chew

Geoffry Chew comments on Bohm's work and the graph theory that is similar to Heisenberg's matrix and the work of his colleague Henry Stapp whom the matrix of the sudden event.

Chew states "physical space time continuum is an approximation of emerging large numbers of discrete gentle quantum events." His understanding is that an understanding of space-time will allow the Copenhagen interpretation to be replaced by a quantum theory of measurement in literature of graphical-particle theory. The adjective "inaccessible" is equal to hidden variable..."

15 Light as Foundation of Being Henry Stapp

It has been claimed that most physicists accept Bohr's interpretation of quantum theory. Of course any physicist who uses quantum theory in a practical way in atomic physics is probably interpreting quantum theory as a useful tool, in the way Bohr suggested. But at the level of basic principle the dissenters include most of the founders of quantum theory: Einstein, Schrodinger, de Broglie, Pauli, Heisenberg, Wigner, and von Neumann, to name a few. Gel-Mann said 'Niels Bohr brainwashed a whole generation of physicists into believing that the problem had been solved fifty years ago.' Pauli said: 'I think the important and extremely difficult task of our time is to try to build up a fresh idea of reality.' (257)

Stapp goes on to say that his proposal is based on his understanding of the classical part of the electromagnetic field and the refinement of locality and causality that has come out of Bell's theorem.

The origin of the problem is precisely that the wave function has mathematical properties appropriate to a representation of probabilities, rather than actualities. For a system of n particles the wave, at a fixed time, is a function in a space of 3n dimensions. But we live in a space of three dimensions Thus the wave function, like a classical probability function, represents all things that possibly can happen; it does not single out the one thing that actually does happen.

To represent the actual thing one appears to have three options:

1 introduce object like (or field-like) entities to represent the actual things.

2 introduce idea-like entities to fill up all the 'mindful' possibilities corresponding to the multi-branched wave function;

3 introduce action-type entities to 'collapse' (i.e. eliminate) the unrealized branches of the wave function

The first alternative is the de Broglie-Bohm pilot wave idea the second one is parallel worlds seen as objectively real. (258-259)

Stapp says that his approach is in accord with the ideas of Bohm, Heisenberg and von Neumann.

16 The automorphism group of C4 W. Kilmister

In this paper Kilmister talks about mathematical representations of the implicate explicate order proposal of by Dr. David Bohm. I'll briefly say that Hiley and Bohm have used the Clifford Algebra that somehow can be put in the implicate order.

17 Some Spinor Implications Unfolded F. A. M. Frescura and B. J. Hiley

Frescura and Hiley state "Rather we start by taking the notion of process as fundamental; not a process in a space-time, but a process from which we hope eventually to abstract basic relationships that'll allow us to reconstruct out present notions of space-time. Thus space-time can be regarded as an order of relationships. Such an idea is not new. It was proposed circa seventeenth century, by Leibnitzz, who regarded space as the order of coexistence and time as order of succession..."

"It is therefore in the explicate order that locality emerges. Any appearance of non-locality would then arise from the fact that not all processes can be made 'local' together..." Hiley and Francesca's make the distinction that their approach does not use S-matrix, but is one of relationships between algebra and the holomovement. The essential difference between the algebraic spinor and the ordinary spinor is that the algebraic spinor is in reality a spinor of rank two."

18 All is Flux David Finkelstein

"In several basic matters some of which I will touch upon below, Bohm has been years or decades ahead of the rest of us in his intuition for the proper path, at least in my opinion. It is a pleasure to thank him for years of enlivenment. The description David Bohm gives of physics in the appendix to his Relativity makes physics nearly coextensive with humanity. For him science is a mode of perception before it is a mode of obtaining knowledge of the laws of nature..." He goes on to tell how this changed his view from a search for laws of nature to a quest of a perception of nature which is along the lines of David Bohm's view of Infinite potential.

Finkelstein sums up by stating "Bohm may have been the first physicist to take seriously the possibility that the world is not a continuum but a simplical complex."

19 Anholonomic deformations in the ether: a significance for the electrodynamics potentials P. R. Holland C. Philippidis

Holland and Philippidis discuss how the role of the Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect plays a more significant role in quantum mechanics than in classical physics.

That the assumption of an ether may be compatible with `principles of relativity does not compel us to deny the existence of an ether altogether, only that we must give up ascribing a definite state of motion to it. In general relativity space-time itself, insofar as it is endowed (refraction of light), albeit one to which the notion of motion is inapplicable(see also reference 7). Dirac showed how an ether which at each point has a distribution of velocities which are all equally probable would be consistent with relativity, and alternative approaches to the quantum theory by Bohm and Vigier have indicated that a suitably fluctuating ether can contribute to an understanding of micro domain. (296)

20 Can biology accommodate laws beyond physics? H. Frohlich

H. Frohlich's work was involved with the implication of coherence at the cellular level in biological systems far from thermal equilibrium. In this brief article he posits the possibility of freewill in living systems and suggests that David Bohm take on this task of devising experiments to establish the existence of such a concept.

21 Some epistemological issues in physics and biology Robert Rosen

Rosen starts with a quote by Hamlet

Madness in great ones

Must not unwatched go.

Hamlet

Rosen elaborates on the still present bias of the closed system to the neglect of the value of the open system, and then talks about the reductionism that survives in modern physics. "Although the dynamical study of such open systems is presently of great interest (variously called stability theory, bifurcation theory, catastrophe theory, etc.) the physical basis of the phenomena they manifest is still, in my opinion, in an extremely unsatisfactory state. This is largely because, in physics, the closed system is still taken as primary, and to open the system is, in dynamical term, so extremely non-generic that there is not much which can be said in general along this line." He says that this would require an overall of old tools with a need for a new slate. The idea that every sub-system is fractionable is basic to a stronger form of reductionism common among biologists (especially molecular biologist). It is an embodiment of an analytical philosophy going back to the idea that 'mixtures' or heterogeneous phases could always be resolved into 'pure phases' and that the properties of any mixture could be inferred from those of the constituent pure phases. This idea in the form of 'superposition,' survives in an essential way even in modern quantum mechanics..."

Rosen is enamored with N. Rashevsky's holistic approach called relational biology, which he initiated in the early 1950's. "Rashevsky himself, trained as a theoretical physicist had spent the preceding quarter-century pioneering the idea that there could be a theoretical biophysics, related to experimental biology in the way theoretical biology is related to experimental biology. He did this by constructing explicit physical model systems for biological phenomenon. We have already mentioned one; his model for the autonomous generation of a gradient on the basis of reaction and diffusion of chemical species..."

"Similarity or organization of function, is indeed at the root of what we really want to know and understand about organisms, as it is the basis of our deeply held conviction that we can recognize an organism when we see one."

"Rashevsky suggested starting with an abstract organization and recovering the physics through material realizations of this organization. That is what he called relational biology."

"Epistemologically there are two issues raised by the above consideration. First, the rewriting shows explicitly that we never construct mathematical images of single systems, but of classes or families of systems, with the same states but different genomes... " Our rewriting then, serves to re-introduce a definite causal structure into the mathematical description of a system; a causal structure which disappears when we revert to the standard description."

He talks about the inequivalence of the categories of causation. "What we now call physics is the science of simple systems or mechanisms. If organisms, say, are in fact complex systems, and if physics is in fact the science of simple systems, it follows that the relation of physics to biology is not that of general to particular. This reinforces the point made earlier; that to encompass organic phenomena it is physics which will need to be modified, perhaps in way even more radical than can now be imagined. Indeed one can question whether there are any simple systems at all; if there are not, the non traditional universals evaporate entirely. In a certain sense , my contribution is only an elaboration of a remark which Einstein made to Szilard: 'One can best appreciate, from a study of living things how primitive physics still is'. " I have often found myself wishing, in fact, Einstein's uncle had given him a beetle instead of a magnet..."

22 A science of qualities B. C. Goodwin

This brilliant theoretical biologist, who recently has taught a class with the mathematician Basil Hiley at Schumacher college writes on Bohm's perspective on wholeness. "The struggle for unification continues against the power of established interests and habits of mind....Bohm's attempt to bring intelligibility and experiential unity into physics is a part of this struggle; intellectual and spiritual vision continues the tradition of the Renaissance magi, a tradition that has never died despite the apparent victory of Mersenne, and Bacon in the seventeenth century..."

He talks about this tradition in this article, and he mentions Bohm's argument that fragmentation of thought lead to divisions that prevent harmonious relationship between people from happening.

Goodwin sums up: "Wholeness and relational order of the organism is prevented by the analytical tradition of dividing things up, and that reality of mind and matter are different aspect of one unbroken wholeness."

23 Complementarity and the union of opposites M. H. F. Wilkens

Wilkens presents his view on complementarity. "This view gave a somewhat different emphasis to that of Hegel, who seemed to imply that unity of opposites was achieved automatically by the movement of thought; he saw 'in contradiction the negativity which is the inherent pulsation of self movement and vitality' " Talking about the behavior of crystals: "Where there is irregularity in a crystal, the symmetry and asymmetry do not just 'act together' or oppose each other in an unorganized way. Energy requirements cause special new structural forms to develop; for instance, special types of dislocation and disinclination which retain some regularity but also have specifically related break in regularity. This is an example of Hegelian interaction of opposites which give rise to new higher-order forms. Schrodinger knew that the coming together of symmetry and asymmetry on a crystal could give rise to special new phenomena." In his talking about the breaking of symmetry in music and art he quotes Arnold Schornberg (350) 'Dissonance's are only the remote consonance's..."

He talks about the complementarity process involved in creativity which he says is involved with the bringing in of something new:

Many a thinker is in line with a long tradition that all innovation derives from complementarity. For example, Jung wrote 'every creative person is a duality of a synthesis of opposite or contradictory qualities'. Similarly it has been claimed that the basis of poetry is paradox, and that metaphor is based on verbal opposition. (351)

"One of the greatest barriers to creativity is the existence in the mind of firmly embedded conventional patterns of thought from which one cannot escape."

Later he says "As a result it is only courageous people who will seek out and accept a great creative challenge; most people prefer the safety of mediocre conventionality."

Dialogue encourages a free movement of mind and is, of course, essential in conflict resolution. In dialogue each mind learns from the other. The thinking of both parties unites and helps to create, in effect, one common mind which can achieve more than two separate minds. Empathy is then replaced by sympathy; opponents are transformed into partners who work together to solve what they have come to regard as common problems. (359)

Wilkens, who has been involved with the conflict resolution, sums up his articulations on creativity as resolving conflict, with a statement by literary critic I. A. Richard's describing complementarity in metaphor about poetry. "It seems to be the most peace-bringing liberation ever. 'And Heraclitus said 'out of discord comes the fairest harmony.' He is referring to the Einstein Russell manifesto that says that we need a new kind of thinking.".

24 Category theory and family resemblances Alan Ford

"In fact according to the emphasis that I would like to get across here, categorization is simply a cognitive extension of the process of naming. It may seem to some readers that I have got this relationship back to front, but it is a feeling among contemporary semanticists that the classical idea that language is a portmanteau for meaning, 'vison ferroviaire du lagage,' as Fauconnier so aptly names it, is an obstacle in semantics, in the same way that David Bohm has suggested that the mind-body distinction has inhibited the growth of scientific thought in general."

"Curiously in contemporary linguistics the nature of categories and their properties have not been of interest or concern. They are simply assumed and attention, which largely reflects the syntactic preoccupation that has dominated the subject since the publication of Chomsky's "Syntactic Structures" in 1957, has been focused upon their internal ordering and relationships in what has been offered as a hypothesis concerning the cognitive level.

What is to my mind of real interest is the status of the category as a form utilized in thought or reasoning and the influence of its formal properties upon the latter.

The whole question is, do we reason with the aid of categories, i. e., is the establishment of a cognitive categorical level a prerequisite to abstracting information via reasoning or are they in fact something which in the wake of Aristotle we have learned to impose upon reasoning in order to give it some formal weight..."

25 The implicate brain K. H. Pribram

Pribram describes how he finds out about Bohm's thinking through his son and was serendipitously invited to conference by Bohm, and how they meet and have a fruitful discourse:

"And, further, Bohm suggested that the root of those problems was the fact that conceptualization in physics had for centuries been based on the use of lenses which objectify (indeed the lenses of telescopes and microscopes are called objectives). Lenses make objects, particles; should one look through gratings rather than lenses one might see a holographic-like order which Bohm called implicate, enfolded (implicare, Latin: to fold in). He pointed out that in a hologram the whole is enfolded into every portion and therefore the whole can be reconstructed from each and any part..."

Despite reservations about Bohm's work-- Einstein contended that it replaced one set of problems with another set-- Bohm and Hiley pursued the idea of the medium that they called the 'quantum potential'. One of Bohm's graduate students Philippidis demonstrated via a computer simulation that the particle and the wave could be accounted for simultaneously. Pribram said "These experiments had epitomized the conceptual dilemma of quantum physics as expressed in the infamous Schrodinger's cat (which seemed to be both alive/dead) and the collapse of the wave function ( which indicated that when the cat was actually observed the observer decided that the cat was indeed dead or alive)..."

Pribram talks about fourier theorem: 'The Fourier theorem states that any pattern can be reconstructed. This theorem was the basis for Gabor's invention of holography. Bohm told Pribram later that his implicate/explicate (space-time) domains were connected by a Fourier transform."

26 Three holonomic approaches to the brain Gordon Globus.

Gordon Globus proposes that the models of holonomic principles may be elaborated upon in ways that go beyond the existing holographic analogy. The totality of reciprocal enfolding and unfolding is called by Bohm the 'holomovement' or the 'holoflux' The implicate order in contrast arises from total existence, or better, the implicate order is total existence."

"To summarize the empirical situation, in so far as we know, the data available is consistent with the brain's functioning at significantly lower levels according to holonomic principles (Fourier logic), in addition to or rather than functioning according to analytic principles (Boolean logic). The data is not yet in with regard to higher levels of brain functioning. Holonomic speculations accordingly remain of heuristic value."

Globus sums up his possibility of a full holoplenum and he asserts that this is supported by altered states of consciousness and perennial philosophy.

 

27 Wholeness and Dreaming Ullman

Ullman says that dreaming is related to Bohm's view of wholeness and the implicate order. He seems to think that dreams bring us closer to the manifest order and also closer to the mystery of the implicate order.

28 Vortices of thought in the implicate order and their release in meditation and dialogue. David Shainberg

David Shainberg was a close friend of David Bohm, and started a group dialogue with John Briggs and others.

In a true dialogue between people, however, a different ambiance pertains. A true dialogue promotes trust between people. Where there is trust the individuals are more willing to see the frozen condition of the relationships imposed by the conditions of thought . The members of a true dialogue pay attention to this fixation and its vortex and are aware of the limitations it imposes on the group communion. The members of a true dialogue pay attention to this fixation and its vortex and are aware of the limitations it imposes on the group communication. Their dialogue seems to have originated in some awareness of the limits imposed by these kinds of restrictions on the relationship in the implicate order. So the members of the dialogue discover that their commitment is attentiveness to what consciousness is, rather than an attempt to continue the forms into which they have lapsed. As they are together they find that the other people in their group dialogue are examples of what it means to be a human being like themselves. All of them have come into the dialogue because they sensed that they are trapped in a self-orientation and suspect that being with another who is equally caught up willful give them a chance to see into self-deception. This face-off shows each person the fixation in the self that is characteristic of thought and consciousness in all of them. If they are all thinking of themselves as separate others, they are also not different in that they are all doing that. Then they can all become aware that the particular opinions of each are focuses of relationship and as focuses they are organizing forces , but if those foci become fixation points they have blocked the contact between individuals and therefore prevented the group as a whole from knowing its relationship to the larger order in which harmony participates. (409)

One of the central features of dialogue is that it makes apparent that discussion between human beings is an important part of the natural order of life on earth. Human response and articulation of that response, feedback of reactions to that responses and the clarifying of the relationship between different responses, are the way human beings participate in the flow of the implicate order. The dialogue unfolds the different forms that are established in the interaction between people and those forms are enfolded back into different meanings of their relationships to other people. The movement itself is the articulation of implicate order in the human domain. (411-412)

29 Reflectaphors: the (implicate) universe as a work of art John Briggs

As I have mentioned in the contextual essay in the learning agreement, John Briggs was involved in a dialogue group that met once a month for two years. Briggs inspirational writing about the emerging paradigm of wholeness was one of many reasons that moved me to initiate a dialogue group in Eugene.

Brigg's comments on the reflectaphor metaphor: " 'Reflect' comes from the Greek re and flex which means bending back and bending again; meaning is the continual revelation —what Bohm calls unfoldment and enfoldment—of this reflexive movement."

"In the appendix to his 1965 book The Special Theory of Relativity , Bohm considers theories of perception by Piaget, Gibson, Held, Ditchburn and others. He conveys his sense of them through an elegant hypothetical illustration which I will modify and simplify to make the point here about metaphor. In poetry metaphor remains in dynamic tension, the comparison and contrasting doesn't work in a similar way."

Briggs sums up by addressing the ambiguity of metaphor that results in our perceptions based on many issues such as the norms in one's culture.

30 Meaning as being in the implicate order philosophy of David Bohm: a conversation Renee Weber

Renee Weber and David Bohm talk. "The mystic might say that perhaps the total is complete and does not involve time, but there is another set of meanings which is not complete which does involve time. Here it becomes a question of value. The mystic might place the highest and the supreme value on the one that does not involve time and may tend to give much smaller value to the one that does. On the other hand we must explore to see if the mystic always has it right."

David Bohm had been influenced by Hegel's thinking. "Hegel's view that the analysis is the enfoldment of what is to be analyzed and that at the same time its synthesis. Hence it adds meaning and therefore being.

"We are partners in the evolution of universe if meaning is grasped," and quotes Nicholas of Cusa: "eternity both enfolds and unfolds time...

'"If there is a change of meaning and being how significant is change. Perhaps a small change but its implication may not be small." Weber asks Bohm about what does this have to do with the human world? Bohm seems to think that we wont give that much weight to the side of fragmentation and partiality.

Bohm seems to also think that this change of meaning and change of being is what will do it. "What we think and feel counts," Bohm says. "It counts. When you say responsibility the key word is response. Nobody can be responsible who is unable to- respond. If you ask somebody who is unable to respond to be responsible, you have no responsibility but probable guilt. As long as the meaning is confused, nobody can respond to all this. His response is going to be very limited and therefore the responsibility is very limited."

IV. The Search For Meaning: The New Spirit in Science and Philosophy. (Crucible, 1989) edited by Paavo Plylkkanen.

Foreword

Maurice Wilkins, famous biologist from England, writes in the Foreword about his "Reminisces of the rise in consciousness which was associated with the extraordinary events of 1968 in Paris, Berkeley, Prague and other places that addressed the limitations of the industrial era and consequential concern of humans for each, other about fragmented environments that our tradition of fragmented thinking did not correspond with reality..."

In the introduction Paavo Pylkkanen, a philosopher from Finland, states that his book is an extension of what ensued from Unfolding Meaning edited by Donald Factor (Routledge, 1985). Pylkkanen asserts that the aim of this book is "What would a coherent meaning suitable for our time look like"? And "One of the suggestions of this book is that only a radical change in what the world means to us would constitute a change in what the world is. Spinoza's view that mind and matter are aspects of one reality has been extended further by David Bohm in his Significant-soma proposal. 'Soma-significance' emphasizes that soma is significant and that it is meaning, a significance in the mental side that affects soma, rather than a 'psyche' or soul which tends to imply some separate entity." This concept introduced by Bohm in his Unfolding Meaning prompted Pylkkanen's book.

"In summary this book can be seen as attentive sketch of what science, and more generally human inquiry could be like. The need to change to survive and the need for a meaningful survival..."

Part 1

The Meaning Revolution in Science and Culture

Meaning and Information David Bohm

Bohm begins by addressing the semanticist Alfred Korzybki's concern. "There is no limit to information, whatever we say it is it isn't, it may be similar, but it is something more and something different." Bohm says that meaning is inseparably connected with information and he defines "Information is a difference of form that makes a difference in content, i. e., meaning..." He suggests that the activity , virtual or actual in the energy, and in the soma is the meaning of the information. Virtual activity is more than mere potentiality, for example, a kind of suspended action. Imagination is given as an example of this.

"Rather the apprehension of meaning is at the very same time the totality of the action in question (even if this should include the action of suspending outward activity). Meanings, action in significance, and intention could be seen as double fold, explicit knowledge and Polanyi's tacit knowledge. So significance is of potential and is virtually leading to intention for readiness to respond. More generally the choice to act or not to act will depend on the totality of the significance of the moment. Meaning unfolds into intention, and intention into action which, in turn, has further significance, so that there is, in general, a circular flow, or a cycle. Intention, value, and will are aspects of the soma-significant, significant-soma cycle..."

Bohm introduces one of the aims of dialogue, the suspending of fixed (habit) dispositions and then suspend older dispositions for new meaning. He states:

Meaning is the link or bridge between the two sides of indefinitely greater levels of subtlety. The suggestion is that this possibility of going beyond any specifiable level of subtlety is the essential feature on which intelligence is based. That is to say, the whole process is not intrinsically limited by any definable pattern of thought, but in principle constantly open to fresh, creative and original, perceptions of new meaning. (50-51)

"One can see that this also follows in another way by noting that all meaning is to some degree ambiguous, because each content depends on some context.

Thus though memory is essentially mechanical when it is the major factor operating, it is nevertheless able, in a secondary role , to participate significantly in creativity. It is suggested that there is cosmic meaning..."

Bohm points out that in society, culture is the main carrier of meaning.

One of the most important reasons why such fragmentation is sustained is the holding onto meanings that are non-negotiable. If people are able to engage in a real dialogue there will be a free flow of meaning; if people are able to face their disagreements without either confrontation or polite avoidance of issues, and when they are willing to explore points of view to which they may not personally subscribe. If they can in this way engage in a dialogue that is free of evasion or anger, they will find that no fixed position is so important that it is worth holding at the expense of blocking the creativity of the dialogue itself. If this sort of thing could ever happen on a large scale, it would constitute a revolutionary transformation of the very nature of culture and even of consciousness itself.. ( 61-62)

Bohm states: "The whole point of science is to begin with some assumption and see if you can explain a wide range of things from a few assumptions. This enables you to understand in the sense that far more things are explained than you have assumed," and "that what actually would have value would be to have a constantly creative culture. Now I suggest that such creativity is related to a constant discovery of new meanings. Every revolution has come from someone seeing a different meaning in Human society... With the holding of many meanings comes creativity from the free play of minds and that fixed positions means the end of creativity..."

Another point by Bohm that I consider to be very important with regards to the experience of "Bohmian" dialogue is that he was not in favor of breaking down ones opinion. He felt that opinions have to be let go freely.

Bohm sums up: "Creative Insight of meaning is the crucial thing and also the creative communication, which means that people can listen to this creative insight and take it up themselves and go on with it in the flow of meaning where purpose transforms constantly. He also pointed out that something new is needed and always was needed...

A Return to Living Biology Rupert Sheldrake

In modern biology, defenders of the mechanistic view (like Jacques Monad) have substituted for 'teleology' — which is bad, being Aristotelian and non-mechanistic — the word 'teleonomy' — which is good. No one has actually been able to explain exactly why it's different, and Richard Dawkins, who's one of the most extreme of the neo-Darwinian (his book The Selfish Gene may be familiar to you), has put it very well. He has a glossary at the back of his latest book and defined teleonomy as" teleology made respectable'

(92)

Sheldrake suggests that purpose is illegal as a consequence of the bias of the mechanistic world view. Another significant statement pertaining to the inquiry into complexity: "Waddington an important biologist used his term chreode for living systems that could be understood in terms of their movements towards attractors. In modern dynamics processes move towards attractors..."

Part Two

Meaning and the Human Being

Medicine and David Bohm's Theory of Soma-significance Larry Dossey

Larry Dossey sees that Bohm's theory of Soma-significance is applicable to the field of medicine. "Bohm posits "consciousness as we know it is not being attributed to nature, rather he suggests nature and mind as we experience it share an overall process which is an extension of soma-significance and signa-somatic activity..." Dossey seems to think that Bohm's view on consciousness parallels William James, yet he observes that Bohm does not explicitly define consciousness. Dossey concludes that for 300 years medicine has looked to physics for its models and frameworks. "There is always a chance for a new meaning to emerge even in illness, and this can serve as a corrective action in which to attach the words: homeostasis, health, and wisdom."

Meaning and The Living Brain

Matti Bergstrom

Bergstrorm's perspective is oriented towards the neurophysiological view of consciousness. Here are some statements which impressed me at the time that I read his article.

"So 'matter' refers to the representation of material objects in the cortex and 'psyche' or 'consciousness' refers to the interaction of these two brain processes which arises when the brain-stem activity ('psyche') and the cortical activity ('matter') meet.

"Since 'possibility' is the original meaning of the word 'tempus' (time) and since it is consciousness that reveals to the 'self' its existence experience (the physiological arousal function) , the possibility potential of our consciousness is a 'storehouse' of our existence in time. Here in the 'consciousness potential', existence of being is 'devoid of any temporal connotations" see also(see Prigogine and Stengers, 1984, about this topic).

"The tight union between creation and catastrophe tells us that creativity has a very high price in our life: it has always to be paid for with destruction, the birth with death—always, everywhere.

"In the brain function there are yet other signs pointing to the possibility of the existence of a neural 'force' inherent in the value capacity, the nature of which is unknown to us. One finding comes from Sperry's observations (see e.g. 1973) on the 'pictorial', 'holistic' and 'simultaneous' type of processing in the brain which has be assumed to be connected with our aesthetic abilities. These abilities , again, resemble evaluative thinking according to art researchers ( e.g.. Ansemet, 1973, on music) and also concepts such as morality, ethics (see also Bergstrom, 1988) and emotions...

"The 'holistic pressure' does not separate fitter from weaker, nor refuse some and accept others, but merely collects together ( note the possibility 'cloud' in the brain) and accepts all.

"It is possible that whole generations of children will develop a deficiency which can be called value-invalidity. This deficiency means a lack of ability to see things as a whole and to evaluate them, to see alternatives and select among them.

"In as much as the theologian in his theory of god looks at the greatest wholeness, so the physicist looks at the smallest non divisible particles: the two of them have their backs against each other—like a Janus face—looking in opposite directions and understanding each other's language. And in between stands the ordinary man, confused and trying to bring these two together. This is the paradox of today..."

Making Meaning: David Shainberg

Shainberg says that to make meaning is an innately natural process. However, he argues that this process has been thwarted by various factors in the living environment of the human being. Shainberg was one of the initiators of the approach to group dialogue that David Bohm espoused towards the end of his life.

Shainberg states "With regards to the child rearing process, when care-takers emphasize that the child is an entity, this self, with this name, which is doing this or that behavior, they support the gradually developing idea that there is a separate self which is different from its experience and different from others...Our question is then why do so many of us lose this capacity to make meaning? Why do we fall into habits and ruts that lean on old meaning rather than embrace the moment? Why are we so afraid to discover the meanings in our lives at any moment?...The idea , the concept of this self , what Horney (1950) called an idealized self-image, guides what he is because he feels driven to become the daffy condition proposed by his ideas. At the core of human being is a lack of faith in making meaning. Human relationship, which offers such a possibility for extending beyond the inertia of thought through its possibilities of flow and connections, is lived instead as a way to confirm the techniques of finding security."

Shainberg comments on the possibilities for healing. "But it seems to me that where there is a breakthrough or break-up of this thought form which guides the behavior and undermines the faith of the brain in its own capacities there is the beginning of the healing of this essential distrust of meaning making. Thought could then operate differently as an extension of the awareness of new perception in the moments of change."

PART THREE

PHILOSOPHICAL EXPLORATIONS INTO MEANING

Beyond Cezzanne's Mountain: Exploring the Activity of Meaning

F. David Peat

Peat, a friend and colleague of David Bohm, represents some points in this article that are also articulated in detail by Bohm and Peat in Science, Order, and Creativity (Routledge, 1997). Peat comments on Cezzane's ceaseless, and seemingly redundant experimentation. "In looking at such paintings, meaning no longer appears ephemeral but intensely active, as it plays its generative role. Meaning seems to lie outside the purely subjective realm and hints at an objective dimension in which the divisions between internal and external, mind and matter are transcended." He then compares the active information which moves between the implicate, explicate, and super-implicate levels of Quantum Theory with the way of the artist's process of discovery. "A similar activity also takes place in the work of a painter, and for that matter other creative endeavors, in which the unfolding of meaning into art takes place both internally, through perception, thought and feeling and externally, in the physical interaction of paint and canvas". He surmises that "Meaning is therefore clearly and indissolubly linked with creativity..."

Clearly the search for a generative, healing activity of the meaning is the key issue which faces the world today . Clearly something new and creative is called for in which society and each individual is willing to face the unknown In the beginning this will require greater communication and dialogue between people who must learn to work and explore together in a spirit of openness and goodwill, and who are willing to acknowledge and face the fear and anxiety that the events of this century have generated into the unknown. Possibly this publication may spark off and encourage each of us to make that first step into the infinite realm of meaning. (177)

The Mental and The Physical

Arleta Giffor

After pointing out that the implicate order is a departure from Descarte's view of matter, Arletor Giffor talks about how the implicate order relates matter with consciousness. What caught my eye the in this article is her presentation of the self organizing nature of the implicate order.

However, in the present context not only the activity of particle-like manifestations, but also their creation, sustenance and annihilation can be said to be guided by the information contained in the superquantum field.

The important thing to note is that both the original and the superquantum field are forms of the implicate order; the original three-dimensional field represents the first implicate order, and the superquantum multidimensional field represents the second implicate order that is of a more subtle nature than the first one. The causal interpretation of the quantum field theory can therefore be understood in terms of two interrelated implicate orders. (184)

Griffor, who is currently working on a dissertation on aspects of David Bohm's work under Basil Hiley, talks about the meaning of meaning to create new levels of meaning. "This implies that the overall structure of meaning is never complete or fixed in its content and transformation. The self organizing activity of meaning is therefore inseparable from the creative movement of going into the meaning of meaning, which is to say, it is inseparable from what was called intelligence."

"This capacity of going beyond any level of meaning , Bohm points to as the essential feature on which intelligence is based."

Bohm, Plato and the Dark Age of Cave Mechanics

Paavo Pylkkanen

Pylkkannen approaches the difficulties which have been on going in Quantum Theory with the age old Plato's "Allegory of the Cave."

In the above respects, most of the accepted interpretations of quantum theory echo the crude science of Plato's prisoners. The vagueness of quantum reality incomparable to the vagueness of the reality of these prisoners. Quantum reality is sometimes called 'veiled' reality , and even here the analogy holds for what prevented Plato's prisoners from seeing the shadows of people was'...a parapet,...like the screen at a puppet show'. To sympathize with its historical predecessor, present mechanics (though some people prefer calling it wave mechanics—to put it simply, because quantum particle in certain situations act as if they were waves).

The real problem with cave mechanics —past and present —is not its statistical character, but rather its positivistic insistence that, in Plato's words, the 'prisoners[physicists] recognize as reality nothing but the shadows [results of experiments]' (195-196)

Pylkkanen comments: "According to Bohm and Hiley (1987), the essence of Bohr's approach can be put thus: the form of the experimental conditions and the content (meaning) of the experimental results are a single whole phenomenon, which cannot be further analyzed, because of the indivisibility of the quantum of action. This unanalyzability means that for the experimental results to have any clear meaning, we must specify the experimental conditions. Bohr wrote: 'The unambiguous account of proper quantum phenomenon must, in principle 'include a description of all relevant features of the experimental arrangement'."

Plylkkanen's dissertation under David Bohm addressed the question of active information and relevance in contemporary cognitive theory. "Active information reveals itself in the manifest world because it is not abstract..."

This philosopher, who is now teaching in Sweden, comments on Wigner and Bohm's interpretations of consciousness. "Wigner notes how remarkable it is that scientific study of the world led to the content of consciousness as an ultimate reality, whereas almost all cognitive scientists believe that the ultimate reality is 'matter'" . It seems that no academic field accepts the responsibility of discussing the nature of being, but instead, the question is passed around—a supreme form of academic bureaucracy...! Bohm makes it clear that it is not an ordinary physical property like energy or charge: information is a very condensed form of meaning that has to be unfolded ."It is thus a more subtle physical property. But it has to be able to show its effects in the manifest world of quantum particles."

Pylkkanen finishes this article with the remark: "The problem of how the subtle level of consciousness and the manifest level of the brain are related is presently a mystery."

The Mystery of Mathematics

Karl Georg Wikman

This article on the value of mathematics by Georg Wikman clarified some points on the beauty and relevance of mathematics. I quote statements by Wikman which impressed me.

It is generally agreed that mathematics is the most advanced example of structured human reasoning."

Wikman talks about Godel's theorem and how it relates to Bohm's way of thinking. "I will connect the above questions with Bohm's thinking at relevant points. In the last section, I will look at the problems in a cosmic context and raise the question whether mathematics could be seen as the way the universe refers to itself. And here again we will find a link to Bohm's thinking, for although the concept of self reference is only occasionally mentioned by him, it is nonetheless implicit in his philosophy to a high degree.".

Wikman talks about mathematical theorems and how they apply to Bohm's current positing. "If we give significance a primary status, as Bohm does in his current thinking, the difference between a chess problem and an important mathematical theorem becomes more clear. Significance of meaning is always related to a context."

Wikman points out that many theorems are not proved until years later. "The elusive nature of such mathematical insight is also seen from the fact that the result of the insight is in many cases not proved until long after its conception...Mathematics can be described as an introvert science, where the mind is quite free to inquire into analogies and structures of a symbolic nature. On the other hand, it is a form of disciplined thinking with more logical restriction that other kinds of rational thinking..."

"For human consciousness is part of the universe, and the universe does everything that human consciousness does. Thus through the human activity of mathematical imagination, the universe displays its own physical nature to itself."

He sums up by referring to the eminent physicist John Wheeler:" when inquiring into the origins of the universe we cannot escape asking whether a basic principle in cosmogony is self reference. The universe gives birth to communicating participators.

Communicating participators give meaning to the universe..."

Deconstruction, Soma-significance and the Implicate Order: Or, Can David Bohm and Jacques Derrida Have a Dialogue?

Srinivas Aravamudan

Aravamudan sees a connection between Derrida's work and David Bohm's "It is allowing free rein to 'play' and the multiple dissemination of meaning that the self can both be liberated and dissolved from the tyranny of presence—as Bohm himself suggests-- play ('ludere') is the most creative and energetic aspect of consciousness."

Aravamudan talks about language:

While deconstruction, in its response to structuralism, takes place in a totally different disciplinary context, it is indeed closely comparable to Bohm's desire to examine the foundational assumptions and presuppositions of thought—especially in Bohm's great sensitivity, during the process of group dialogue, to the way linguistic predeterminations govern our apprehension of consciousness. If we could put this idea a little differently, the connection being made here between Derrida and Bohm is novel, precisely due to the possibility of free play and linguistic creativity. (245)

The author elaborates on the feasibility of dialogue between and Derrida and Bohm. As I see it in the context of 'Bohmian dialogue' the dialogue between Derrida and Bohm would be limited. The aim of 'Bohmian dialogue' is to take what comes up, whatever it is.

I present some quotes from Aravamudan's article "In contrast Bohm uses the French term 'connaitre' to suggest a personal knowledge which is strongly aware of its contextual significance and self-reflexivity, and presents itself as a process rather than gospel truth, welcoming 'fuzziness' as complexity and clarity rather than uncertainty." "As Bohm points out in Wholeness and the Implicate Order, 'what prevents theoretical insights from going beyond existing limitations and changing to meet new facts is just the belief that theories give true knowledge to reality.'

" Linguistic heterogeneity or' heteroglossia 'as described by Russian literacy critic Mikhail Bakhtin shows us that language is always the force of the 'other'. The words, the language we use, are always another's, in fact, that of many others...While Bohm's theory of dialogue is not as literally based as Bahktin, it seems clear that Bohm constantly encourages hybridization , laughter and play—for instance, his notion that dialogue involves 'entertainment 'implies both the hybrid and carnival aspects that Bakhtin speaks about."

Srinivas Aravamudan concludes:

"If the world is seen as 'one vast web of soma-significant and signa-somatic activity' as Bohm says, we can no longer think in terms of archaic notions such as presence and absence of spirits—animate and inanimate. If we need to talk of the aspect of 'intention' it can be seen as the relative function or change of flow of 'energy'. The matter-energy-meaning triangle proposed has tremendous potential application, especially as it is not hierarchized (unlike the Hegelian dialectic) all three are interdependent and reproductive, and mutually constitutive in Bohm's theory. (252)

A Soma-signifciant Cosmology: the First Surge

Francis Frode Steen

Throughout this article Francis Frode Steen talks about local and non local influences. "What does this mean? This is as much as to say the universe perceives itself afresh each moment instantaneously, and this perception is the cause of its coherence."

She continues with her analogy of meaning in the moment. "Intention is a sustained insight into the vaguely possible, acting as the structure's telos or goal: its final cause, guiding the present choices towards future forms." And she raps up this inspirational interpretation of meaning in the cosmos: "Awareness tunes all structures to their final causes..."

Part Four

Living in The World

To Reconsider One's Life: An Exploration in Meaning

David Schrum

David Schrum writes how the only real inquiry is facing the actualities of our lives by the reconsideration of our life. Subjects that he touches touched upon were: Truth, Religion, Social relationships, personal identity, morality, and aspirations.

Ultimate Questioners: The Search for 'Omnivalent' Meaning

John Briggs and Frank McCluskey

Briggs and McCluskey argue that philosophy is similar to art and that philosophy's aim has been to create an open minded state of mind which they call Omnivalence. "William James said: The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths... We generally aren't aware of contradictions in our answers. The patterns of contradictions are a clue to the omnivalence that lies hidden in every ultimate question."

Briggs and McCluskey discuss "Truth as omnivalent meaning" including the literary terms irony, metaphor and ambiguity that tie in with the metaphor of Omnivalence.

"There is no doubt that literature raises ultimate questions —and it answers them, but their answers are in the form of metaphor, irony, and what William Empson called 'ambiguity'. Literary answers are, therefore, perceptions in the fundamental uncertainties of ideas. Keats wrote that the artist could discover truth by exercising what he called 'negative capability' that is the ability to live in doubts and uncertainties."

Briggs talks about Descarte's certain discovery of God. "In that sense Descartes' God is not a certain fact but a certain uncertainty that is happening to the thinker as he thinks about the question. Descarte discovered omnivalence through the application of careful, logical thought. This is the philosophers art..."

"In his book the Heart Of Philosophy Jacob Needleman points out the most important thing about Socrates was his so-called 'Socratic ignorance'. He did not know the answer and he knew that he did not know. He wanted to inquire. His relentless inquiry into assumptions, Needleman asserts, creates an incredible state of mind, what we've called here a state of omnivalence...'"

Briggs and McClusky close: "If David Bohm is right that our meaning affects matter, then living out our meanings in their larger context might have an incalculable effect on the world we live in."

Mind and Its Wholeness

Arleta Griffor

Arleta Griffor addresses one of the factors that is blocking creative meanings from taking place in society. She talks about absolute necessity or the trap principle.

One form of such a trap is to hold rigidly to one's world-view. That is, to regard it, tacitly or explicitly, as a necessary truth about 'how things really are'. What takes place in such a case is that an absolute necessity is attributed to the meanings that are limited. In this way they appear to be unlimited and become a source of confusion. For since they are the 'truth' everything else has to give way to them. They take on an absolute priority, or an absolute value, dominating one's thinking, perception, and activity in general. (296)

Griffor continues on the same theme. "The basic pattern of this activity is, as could be seen, that one set of limited meanings which are taken to be unlimited, is replaced with another set of limited meaning with the same necessity attached to them. It is not surprising that the present state of the individual and society is the state of thorough going fragmentation, being basically the result of these contradictory attempts to clear up misinformation by creating more of it."

Griffor presents the way out of the trap:

Such a capacity of going beyond any level of meaning has been called 'intelligence'. We may thus say that intelligence is the activity which is able to change the meanings, and there-fore to affect the somatic set up of the brain that is sustained by these meanings. This would entail a new order of the mind's activity in the sense that if this kind of perception takes place, the mind ceases to be dominated by the meanings in which its activity is entrapped. In other words the mind would enter another order which is informed by free, creative perception, or intelligence. (307)

V. At the Seminar entitled "David Bohm: Dialogue and the Implicate Order" which I participated in at Schumacher College in 1992, the twenty two participants began by asking what were the relevant questions in relationship to Bohm's proposal on Dialogue. These questions were jotted on the board in the seminar room.

Dialogue: — What is it? Examples?

What is its value?

How many are needed and what part is played by facilitators?

Is Dialogue between cultures?

Where is it? What is it?

Does It Help?

Is its plausibility based on physical science?

Just intellectual? A Mystery? A fashion?

A way to a better way of living?

What is its relationship to other concepts : For example, Mystical & Scientific?

Science Status role in Society? and Cultures?

Part of a holistic world view?

Bohm's work The role of love?

The meaning of unfolding?

The role of art in relation to it to science?

His definition of order? Phenomenology of mind?

Thinking— How can we see fragmentary thinking?

—The problem of thought pollution?

Relationship between abstraction & concrete realities?

thought and action?

mind and matter?

consciousness and time?

time and now?

What varieties of ignorance are there?

Such questions can be addressed in many different ways. As David Bohm and others have said the questioning of questioning is a non verbal process.

"From A Letter — 1962" (Dialogue Papers, 1995), Bohm talks about specialized knowledge, and the need to be without a permanent self and to the need look at generalizations as provisional working hypotheses. He distinguishes between factual and general distinctions of knowledge, and that generalizations are both true and false. I think it would be fruitful to look at the questions that we asked at Schumacher in the light of Bohm's statements.

In Science, Order, and Creativity Bohm and Peat call for a resurgence in creativity. One of the examples they illustrate is that of artists who had the sensitivity to change their thinking and consequentially their understanding by being sensitive to the moment, and the process of the medium that they were using.

There are others who see creativity as a group process and beyond. For example, Mihaly Csikszentmihali's "The Domain of Creativity"Theories of Creativity (Sage, 1990) presents a systems view of creativity that proposes the field, domain, and the individual as interrelated. He essentially argues that whatever creativity is, it is from a larger and more mysterious process than the notion of the individual in isolation. Frank Barron No Rootless Flower: an Ecology of Creativity ( Hampton Press, 1995) argues that creativity is a collaboration that includes a human ecology.

I was introduced to Anthony Judge's "Cultivating the Songlines of the Noosphere" at the first Members Meeting of the Club of Budapest, May 1996, in his section "Models of Dialogue. He says of Bohm and de Mare's work: This project is concerned with "generative dialogue as collective creation". Judge usefully distinguishes this emphasis from those associated with other models of dialogue

Changing Consciousness (Harper San Francisco, 1991)

David Bohm and Mark Edward talk about the undue use of thought. As Bohm proposes thought has a historical background. In short the Eastern world has put the immeasurable first in their value system while the Western has put the measurable as first. Bohm claims that thought is assumed to have always been that way and did not have anything to do with it s inception; from this state of inertia thought sustains itself as necessarily so. The discourse between Bohm and Edwards is about photographs in juxtapositions in order to show that our problems are common. Edwards says his aim is to show the root causes of these problems afflicting humanity. I was often moved into spontaneous reflections by looking at these photographs by Edwards that portray boredom in the so called wealthy cultures, and the great suffering shown in the planet's poverty cultures.

Throughout the book they talk about each picture, which relates the implications of the way human beings make abstractions. Regarding one photograph in the chapter "The World is in Crises" Bohm tells photographer Mark Edwards that each picture is part of a broader context. This picture shows a Journalist reporting the 1984 drought in Ethiopia. The Journalist is taking a picture with a camera. One doesn't know what he is shooting. The broader context is out of the picture. In this picture a refugee is lying at the journalists feet in duress. Bohm and Edwards feel that this photograph exemplifies an example that the environmental situation is being resolved by calling the abstraction the problem. Whereas in actuality this abstraction is always of a larger context. Earlier in the chapter Bohm discussed with Edwards the word concrete which comes from the Latin root concrescent meaning "grown together". Bohm points out that "Reality is everything concrete, and is much too much to be grasped by the mind in detail so you make an abstraction—call that foreground—and leave the rest as background which you don't notice very much..."

To sum up, Bohm says that thought could be seen as a map of reality that needs continual updating. "It needs the constant perception of the fact."

While David Bohm developed his work on group dialogue in Ojai, he also communicated with other collaborators, published position papers and attended conferences. See for example, "The Bohm/Rosen Correspondence 1983, Science, Paradox, and the Moebius Principle:: The Evolutiion of a "Transcultural" Approach to Wholeness (SUNY, 1994) and "On Self-Deception in the Individual, in Groups and in Society as a Whole Group Cohesion: Theoretical and clinical perspectives. (Grune and Stratton, 1981).

The Bohm/Rosen Correspondence 1983

For a year and a half David Bohm and Steven Rosen exchanged letters concerning the need for an artistic sensitivity to meaning. Bohm would write every letter by hand and Rosen would transcribe them and put his own response in brackets. On the whole they agreed on many points of contention, concurring that all forms of assertions take place in the implicate, and that poetic statements present the implicate forms directly. In their letter exchange they posit that creativity is an expression of new meaning. Bohm writes: "So to see a new meaning is actively to change the world." He goes on to talk about reality being independent of thought in society as a whole.

In the Epilogue Steven Rosen makes this statement of intent.

What I have come to understand is that if I am to write wholeness (not just write about it), beyond expanding the scope of my subject matter to language in general, my own manner of writing needs to be less prosaic and more poetic, more meditative or "proprioceptive (as Bohm would say) Whereas prose objectifies, leaving the subject entirely implicit and thus perpetuating the total splitting of object from subject, poetry allows the subject to reverberate. Amidst the objectification, a fully meditative or proprioceptive writing (one that surpasses traditional poetic forms) would integrate subject and object in a complete and direct way. (270)

Rosen had pointed out in a very detailed manner that analogies which Bohm used to describe the implicate order were still mechanistic. Bohm agreed with Rosen and alluded to a fresh set of analogies from art forms that comprehend this totality. Rosen and Bohm asserted that part of the challenge is to make the unconscious conscious; this is a challenge for Transdisciplinarity. This would lead to an understanding of the implicate order that represents a more accurate model of what wholeness might be like for our time. In this correspondence they agreed that a holistic mode of expressing requires and invites reciprocation on the reader's part. Reflecting on this correspondence, I found the method that these two scholars took that of exchanging personal letters to be encouraging. Now that we have Electronic letter writing perhaps this form will be enhanced?

Thought As A System by David Bohm (Routledge, 1990) is the last seminar on dialogue held in Ojai. These seminars were recorded and transcribed and I have looked through the transcripts from 1987-1989, and listened to the 1986 tape. Each year David Bohm and colleagues went over the same material in a recursive manner. This experience of group dialogue is one that is learned tacitly by the process of participation. Before going to this book, I'll present some statements made in the three seminars held between 1987-1989 which were edited by David Moody, David Bohm and others.

November 11, 12, 13 , 1987 Dialogue Seminar Ojai, Ca.

David Bohm began the 1987 seminar by commenting that "in the 20's 30's and 40's optimistic attitude was prevalent..." Going back in history, he mentions Diderot; he is referring to a fading impetus of the Renaissance and that a faith in reason failed and that Jesus's mission did not work...Then he asks the group "Where do we go from here? What now?

"Think with your blood and think right..." He starts to point out about what he means by thought. "Rational is under control of the irrational—that's the first point. Machiavelli was the first person to admit openly that nations lie for interest of state." Thought was seen as orderly, rational, and factual.

(9).

Bohm surmises that "Healthy thought acknowledges mistakes which defend themselves and refuse to be acknowledged..."

That's the right scientific approach to look at any theory whether you like it or not. Yet I say that approach is absolutely necessary, if society is to work in a harmonious way...The Rules of logic used to show thought rational. (10)

The participants and David Bohm addressed the social cultural implications of thought.

But thought is also sociocultural: it spreads through people; talking via mediums of the times , pony express, mail, telegraph, radio, news, via T

Von Clausen-wiez German politician and General "war is the continuation of Politics by other means... Gordon Childe said It Happened in History that metals and domination were a rationale for the development of technology... (21)

Bohm suggests "That in looking at thought it will be useful to have a map which guides our perception..."He makes a distinguishment between thought and thinking, and then perception and conception, finally Bohm talks about deeper orders. "Generative order defined as deeper and manifest form of things emerge creatively from this order ..."

Then further distinctions:.

"The place in the function whether it's particular or general [general is what decides they are related] But then, in an abstraction , we see the particulars as separate, now, that is useful in abstraction but a fundamental mistake of thought is to take that as the foundation, as the independent reality " (171)

David Bohm Seminar 1988 /edited by Bohm, Phildea Fleming and James Brodsky

From the beginning Bohm's probing requires much reflection.

"It's a subtle question. If I say "perception" that is a word. That goes into this pool of words and thoughts and felts. Out of that comes a picture of perception. And when I see this picture I say, "yes, I perceive." That's the danger. You see what I'm driving at? You can say, "Love one another. All you need is love." So the words go into the pool and then this comes out with some felts and you say, "okay, I've got love and everything's all right." Those felts are conglomerations of past feelings which you are now giving the name 'love'. (34)

Bohm remarks on the way the collective mind tends to work.

The lie is a certain concept. "This representation is collective, and the collective representation is powerful for many reasons - not only because one way of testing the truth is to ask if everybody agrees, but another point is just merely having all these people together creates an emotional power and a sense of being together - participation. (110)

David Bohm Seminars 1989: edited by Dr. David Bohm

Bohm contends that society would be wise to pay attention to the ignorance of thought's subtleties.

Well, I say resistance to thought is violence. To resist thought is an inappropriate use of force, an undue use. We need to see what thought means, and be sensitive to whatever it is coherent or not. The difficulty is that we often don't realize that the whole of thought goes into feeling — or what I call 'felt'. It goes into the state of the body. It can be projected into somebody else as an image, or into the whole society. In this way most of our social problems arise in thought. we then try to use force to solve these problems, and they never get solved. Now, that is the general idea. (37)

Bohm, who about this time, was working on a book with environmental photographer Mark Edwards says in this seminar that Ecological disaster is inevitable. "It is a question of when more than anything."

I have been involved with this dialogue experience as proposed by Bohm and colleagues for six years, and this conflict seems to be on going within the culture, whether to privilege the body or the mind.

"The Human race tends to divide into two groups. One says, "We're intellectual. We don't trust the emotions." but it doesn't work either way. You won't get out of the muddle by saying, "Don't be intellectual," nor by saying , "Don't be emotional." (94)

Here are several examples on the complex occasions of thought's occurrence.

Question of judgment. When you say something is real that is an example of a judgment —the readiness to question your judgment has to be open, rather than making an absolute conclusion that is all closed together. This is a very delicate and subtle matter, because once you have made the judgment of truth, then it seems to you that that's it. That's the way it is. It is literally the way it is. (102)

The representation that thought makes re-represents a past representation. Representation presents that past presentation again in the present, but presents it more abstractly-just as an actor makes a representation of a character, and then presents that character in a play. (105).

Bohm: The move to coherence is innate , but our thought has muddled it. Bohm talks of incoherent response is on the program of memory. Takes place in the tacit process as well in process of thought itself. (107)

The seminar participants finish this seminar by listening to Bohm about the collective insight of Proprioception. "Proprioception of thought is further in the brain and more subtle than the body, and so on, and could have been easily lost. The proposal is that in the tacit process of thinking there is a proprioception. Tacit learning is incoherent at first and then there is learning by doing, which is presented in the example of learning to ride a bicycle..."

In what turned out to be his final seminar in Ojai, Ca. Bohm uses the language of Systems Theory, suggesting that thought is systemic and one of thought's manifestations is the process of reflexes, that reveal self referential modes to the participants. Bohm proposes that from this process of group dialogue a collective Proprioception or insight can happen between the participants. The possibility of this emergencies in a structured setting of people meeting in a circle for a good length of time on a sustained basis. Beyond basically meeting in a circle for ninety minutes, suspension is one of the more difficult concepts to understand; especially if one has not participated in this form of dialogue with no set agenda, leader or facilitator. Bohm says an example of suspension is verbalizing of one's anger "Also we were saying that with all sorts of emotional disturbances, such as anger, you could first find the word which will stir up the disturbance so that you can then get something to observe." As I see it, in the dialogue meetings that I participated in Oregon, each person would play with suspension on a variable basis, and often times it was difficult to catch on, that a participant was playing with suspension.

In Thought As A System Bohm proposes that the fault of thought is throughout the system, our questions contain hidden assumptions "that's the point. therefore, when you question the question itself, you maybe are questioning a deeper assumption. But that's done non-verbally. Do you see what I mean? To question the question eventually has to be a non-verbal act, which you can't describe..." Bohm felt that one of the tests for coherence would be if incoherence continues, that is if what's going on between people keeps producing incoherence. He is suggesting that incoherent actions are seen in the reflex. He is also proposing that a collective insight that sees this reflex would lead to the understanding of thought's behavior, and from this understanding a self corrective process would ensue. One of the aims of this dialogue experience is an understanding of alethia, which is Greek for 'out of sleep'.

Bohm talks about participatory thought: "Myths are collective fantasies, and every culture has its myths. Many of them are entering perception as if they were perceived realities." And Hate: "We could say that hate is a neurophysiological chemical disturbance of a very powerful kind, which is now endemic in the world." And insight: Bohm articulates "We could say that something of possibly cosmic origin operates directly in the body when there is insight; the meaning of the word individual means no division..."

This seminar winds down to a close with the group talking about thought and the self-image and the requirement of insight to resolve this question. Bohm reminds them: "And that insight would open the door to freedom collectively as well as individually—to friendship and fellowship and love."

I met John McMahon at Schumacher college in 1992. He was a participant in the Dialogue and the Implicate Order seminar. He reviewed Thought As A System (The Scientific and Medical Network Review, 1995 edited by David Lorimer).

Dr. McMahon comments that the book contains numerous profound statements such as: 'we don't know where insight comes from ...the reflex of thought is continually resisting and defending against itself...insight is probably from immense depths of subtlety... whatever is behind the mind is a vast stream and on the surface are ripples which are thought... thought takes itself to be big. But maybe its just a ripple on the stream. and the stream is the stream of consciousness. McMahon argues that the content of this book is a map, an open and propositional map of the processes of thought. "It contains the clearest exposition of the thoughts of David Bohm that I have read."

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