Part 2: Bohm's Search to Establish A New Order In Physics

BOHMS SEARCH TO ESTABLISH A NEW ORDER IN PHYSICS
Born in 1917 in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, Bohm's momentous career in physics, marked by a lifetime of courage and controversy, ended on October 27, 1992, when he suffered a fatal heart attack leaving the world with one less eloquent voice for cosmic wholeness. Far beyond his legacy within the field of physics, it is this emphasis on eloquence, the action, practice, or art of using language with fluency, power, and aptness in discourse that stands out as Bohm's enduring methodological approach to problem solving. Bohm's journey into the transpersonal can be traced to his fledgling investigation of quantum theory's philosophical meaning, marked by the publication of his book Quantum Theory in 1951. This philosophical inquiry emerged as a consequence of spending time having conversations with Albert Einstein while both men were living in Princeton. Einstein's influence on Bohm deepened his search for the ultimate meaning of reality (Sharpe, 1993). The majority of Bohm's thinking has been summed up in his book Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980a), whose exposition has been extended in his and F. David Peat's book Science, Order, and Creativity (1987). Bohm elaborated on various aspects of these ideas in several other publications (1980b, 1984a, 1984b, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1993, Bohm & Weber, 1982a, 1982b, 1986a, 1986b, 1987; Bohm & Welwood, 1980; and Sheldrake & Bohm, 1982). His excursions into Eastern philosophy, parapsychology, neuroscience, ecology, and other topics stimulated by his discussions with Jiddu Krishnamurti led Renee` Weber to describe Bohm as:
. . . a rare combination of the scientist and mystic combined in one person. . . . [Indeed,] Bohm is considered one of the world's foremost theoretical physicists and one of the most influential theorists of the emerging paradigm (Weber: 23, 1986).[2]
While Bohm has not specifically written in defense of transpersonal psychology (rather these tangential excursions have run somewhat parallel to his primary interests), he can be considered one of the chief advocates working to demonstrate transpersonal psychology's relationship to relativity and quantum theory. Bohm's visionary approach toward understanding transpersonal psychology's relationship to these fundamental physical theories represent what Gordon G. Globus has referred to as holistic physics (Globus, 1986). Bohm recalls in the introduction to Wholeness and the Implicate Order that his interests in the mystery of movement as a child stimulated his holistic approach to physics. Attempting to solve this enchanting perplexity of motion (as well as unify quantum and relativity theory), Bohm stretched his imagination beyond modern physics theoretical limits in an attempt to establish a new order in physics. Bohm's new order (which he refers to as the implicate order), is an attempt to explain motion in terms of an undivided wholeness, instead of the presently accepted view of motion as a series of autonomous Cartesian coordinates (objects), described in terms of differential equations. It was Bohm's contemplative pursuit of something that goes beyond the present understanding of quantum theory that produced the broader philosophical proposal of the implicate order. Pursuing this line of thought eventually led Bohm to turn the traditional metaphysics of EuroAmerican science on its head, saying that the implicate order is our fundamental basis for reality, which is contrary to the established Cartesian view. If you are already jumping to conclusions that Bohm is seeking to promote an updated version of Plato's theory of forms you are mistaken. Clarifying this point, Bohm adds that through a cyclic process of projection, injection and re-projection, the implicate order has no relationship to our traditional notions of space-and-time. Instead the implicate order is a domain that resembles the concept of reality Immanuel Kant referred to as noumenon. Here again it needs to be made clear that Bohm's theory of knowledge is very different from Kants. Bohm discussed the similarities and differences between his theory of knowledge and Kant's in a conversation with Weber titled "Mathematics: The Scientist's Mystic Crystal."
Weber: Kant's problem was: We cannot see things as they really are because we impart our structures to experience, so we bar the way to the noumenon with our own inner categories. Bohm: But my view is to say, I am the noumenon; so there is a way out of Kant's trap. At least I am of the noumenon. Weber: Or I can come into harmony with it, become commensurate with it, which Kant of course denies. Bohm: Yes. I am participating in the noumenon (Bohm & Weber: 152, 1986b).[3] The significance of Bohm's assertion that we can participate in the noumenon cannot be underestimated. Provided we choose to accept it, Bohm's implicate order will have immediate relevance for transpersonal psychology, because it will provide transpersonal psychology with a metaphysics that unites cosmos and consciousness.