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TWM
David Bohm (1917-1994) was
one of the foremost theoretical physicists of his generation and
one of the most influential theorists
of the emerging paradigm through which the world is increasingly
viewed.
Bohm's challenge to the conventional understanding of quantum
theory has led scientists to re-examine what it is they are
doing and to
question the nature of their theories and their scientific
methodology. He brought together a radical view of physics,
a deeply spiritual
understanding and a profound humanity. In the years before
his death in 1992, Bohm lectured worldwide on the meaning of
physics and consciousness.
In an interview in 1989 at the Nils Bohr Institute in Copenhagen,
where Bohm presented his views, Bohm spoke on his theory of wholeness
and the implicate order. The conversation centered around a new worldview
that is developing in part of the Western world, one that places more
focus on wholeness and process than analysis of separate parts. Bohm
explained the basics of the theory of relativity and its more revolutionary
offspring, quantum theory. Either theory, if carried out to its extreme,
violates every concept on which we base our understanding of reality.
Both challenge our notions of our world and ourselves.
He cited evidence from both theories that support
a new paradigm of a more interrelated, fluid, and less absolute basis
of existence,
one
in which mind is an active participant. "Information contributes
fundamentally to the qualities of substance." He discussed forms,
fields, superconductivity, wave function and electron behavior. "Wave
function, which operates through form, is closer to life and mind...The
electron has a mindlike quality."
In his groundbreaking theory of "wholeness and the implicate
order", Bohm proposed a new model of reality that was a revolutionary
challenge to physics. In this model, as in a hologram, any element
contains enfolded within itself the totality of its universe. Bohm's
concept of totality included both matter and mind.
Bohm also mentioned the dangers we face as a society
and the changes we will have to make in our thinking in order to
have a future. He
said we need a more holistic approach to the ecological problem
and must find something else in life besides economic growth; if
it continues
unchecked, it will destroy the planet.The emerging change in consciousness
is the challenge and the key: "Our future depends on whether
we feel like part of this one whole or whether we feel we're separate."
Mystic Fire Online
David Bohm was one of the world's greatest
quantum mechanical physicists and philosophers and was deeply influenced
by both J.
Krishnamurti and Alfred
Einstein.
Born in Wiles-Barre, Pennsylvania on December 20, 1917, he studied
under Einstein and Oppenheimer, received his B.Sc. degree from
Pennsylvania State College in 1939 and his Ph.D. in physics
at the University of
California, Berkeley, in 1943. He was the last graduate student
to study with Oppenheimer at U.C. in the 1940s, where he remained
as a
research physicist after Oppenheimer left for Los Alamos to work
on the atomic bomb. He worked at Berkeley on the Theory of
Plasma and
on the Theory of Synchroton and Syndrocyclotrons until 1947.
From 1947-1951 he taught at Princeton University as an Assistant
Professor and worked
on Plasmas, Theory of Metals, Quantum Mechanics and Elementary
Particles.
He was blacklisted by Senator Joe McCarthy's witch-hunt trials while
teaching at Princeton. Rather than testifying against his colleagues,
he left the U.S. Bohm subsequently became Professor at the University
of Sao Paulo, Brazil, the Technion of Haifa, Israel, and at Birkbeck
College, University of London; Research Fellow at Bristol University;
and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1990. Bohm lived in
London and died in 1992.
Bohm was a member of the Royal Academy, the originator of the causal
interpretation of quantum theory, and the author of a famous text on
quantum mechanics and of numerous articles and other books. The best-known
recent work was Wholeness and the Implicate Order. He wrote his classic
book, Quantum Theory, in an attempt to understand quantum theory from
Nils Bohr's point of view. After completing the book and communicating
with Einstein on it, Bohm remained unsatisfied with the theory. Bohm's
challenge to the conventional understanding of quantum theory has led
scientists to re-examine what it is they are doing and to question
the nature of their theories and their scientific methodology.
A profoundly contemplative man, Bohm arrived intuitively at universal
truths and presented them in imaginative models, in the languages of
both physics and philosophy. His physics and cosmology were all-encompassing
and so far ahead of his time that few people were able to appreciate
them. Mainstream physicists considered them too mystical, and few mystics
could follow his subtle scientific reasoning. (Krishnamurti was a notable
exception.)
Bohm redefined physics. To him it was not about mere
prediction and control, nor even mathematical equations. Though central
to the enterprise,
they are not its essence. Physics is about nature and our understanding
of nature. For Bohm, its meaning and its message were creativity,
the signature of an infinite universe. He saw it an undivided wholeness
enfolded into an infinite background source that unfolds into the
visible,
material, and temporal world of our everyday lives. He said that
thought can grasp the unfolded, but only something beyond thought—intuition,
unmediated insight, intelligence—can EXPERIENCE the enfolded.
At some point deep within the implicate order, thought and language
fail
us and only sacred silence can reveal truth. That silence is the
language of the whole, the universe expressing itself through us
in a life of
integrity rather than fragmentation.
Bohm envisioned a transformation for those who grasped
quantum mechanics in depth: a world of interconnection and interdependence,
of direct
and instantaneous communication, in which we have learned to harness
the energies of compassion. Giving voice to the marvelous possibilities
of a new future, he was himself an example of his ideas. Many who
knew him thought of him as a sort of "secular saint." He
had a visionary quality that drew others to him and inspired them.
He was
transported by the clarity of his vision and energized by it to
such a point that he swept his listeners with him into the orbit
of the
possible. He believed in a world that was meaningful, clear, intelligent
and spiritual, where the implicate order is expressed as a living
force in our explicate lives.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
"Quantum Theory," New York, 1951
"
Causality and Change in Modern Physics," London, 1957
"
The Special Theory of Relativity," New York 1966
"
Wholeness and the Implicate Order," London, 1980
"
Unfolding Meaning," (record of a dialogue with David Bohm),
London, 1985
"
Science, Order and Creativity," New York, 1987
"
Thought as a System," London, 1994
See also "The Energies of Love: In Honor of David Bohm," an
article by Renee Weber in The Quest, Autumn, 1993.
