Bohm's Quest for Etymological Precision in His Conceptual Narrative of the Implicate Order

BOHM'S QUEST FOR ETYMOLOGICAL PRECISION IN HIS CONCEPTUAL NARRATIVE OF THE IMPLICATE ORDER
In keeping with the spirit of Bohm's process of inquiry, our understanding of the implicate order properly begins with his quest for etymological precision. Beginning with the word implicate, we learn it is based on the Latin term plicare, meaning to fold. The implicate order can therefore be referred to as a domain of unmeasured reality, a useful schematic reference to matter that has been enfolded or injected back into the whole. Juxtaposed to the implicate order is Bohm's concept of the explicate order. The explicate order refers to the domain of phenomenological-sensorimotor events: matter projected from the whole that has passed the minimum threshold to affect our sense perception. In other words the explicate order refers to the domain of reality we usually refer to as physical phenomena—relatively independent sub-wholes like rocks, plants, animals, humans, and galaxies that our usual state of human consciousness perceptually discerns as randomly distributed autonomous entities. The mathematics of fractals and chaos theory has allowed us to perceive patterns of order beyond the threshold of sense perception (Briggs & Peat, 1989; Peat, 1991), echoing Bohm's idea that the explicate order is only relatively autonomous from a larger whole, the implicate order.