The universe as process: David Bohm's implicate order
I've just finished reading Infinite
Potential, J. David Peat's biography of David Bohm. Bohm was
a protégé of Einstein, a colleague of Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project, a
man hounded from his native land by McCarthyism, an advisor to the Dali Lama,
and the most creative theoretical physicist of the 20th Century. Yet his
revolutionary theories about the nature of the universe remain largely ignored
by the scientific community.
What impressed me most was Bohm's vulnerability, his
ability to produce work of stunning genius despite the pain that wracked his
personal life. He was emotionally isolated, almost autistic in his isolation,
but capable of a singular focus upon a problem. He lived not entirely in this
world. His ambition was to understand the very roots of reality, what lies
beneath even quantum reality. His vision stitches back together the fragmentary
world view resulting from our incomplete understanding of relativity and quantum
mechanics. It will take me years to understand the significance of Bohm's
contribution; it's a worthwhile ambition.
I suspect Bohm's concept of the implicate universe, the
folding and unfolding of meaning, holds the potential to undo the feeling
of alienation that haunts Western culture. Perhaps it can even save us from
ourselves. It's certain we need saving and I doubt anything less fundamentally
religious than our understanding of reality will
suffice.
