[Peter Mutnick]
Below is the passage from Bohm that I think is quitessential and
foundational to all future physics. It has become the foundation of my
approach in all my recent postings. I mention in passing that Aage Bohr has
an approach that may be related to this approach. It is even simpler, and
strikes me as an oversimplification, but time and close analysis will tell.
Aage Bohr claims to be able to derive all of quantum physics from
relativistic symmetries, such as translation, reflection, and perhaps
rotation. He claims that the state vector and Hilbert space formalism is
just a convenient way of handling these underlying symmetries, which are the
real source of all the quantum phenomena, such as uncertainty and
complementarity. The citation for this paper is: "Primary Manifestations
of Symmetry", Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 67, No. 1, January 1995. Here
is Bohm's quintessential idea, which I believe is more likely to be
fruitful:

[David Bohm, "Wholeness and the Implicate Order", 1980, Ark edition 1983, pp
201-4]
All of this suggests that quite generally (and not merely for the special
case of listening to music), there is a basic similarity between the order
of our immediate experience of movement and the implicate order as expressed
in terms of our thought. We have in this way been brought to the
possibility of a coherent mode of understanding the immediate experience of
motion in terms of our thought (in effect thus resolving the Zeno's paradox
concerning motion).

To see how this comes about, consider how motion is usually thought of, in
terms of series of points along a line. Let us suppose that at a certain
time t_1, a particle is at a position x_1, while at a later time t_2, it is
at another position x_2. We then say that this particle is moving and that
its velocity is

v = x_2 - x_1 / t_2 - t_1 .

Of course, this way of thinking does not in any way reflect or convey the
immediate sense of motion that we may have at any given moment, for example,
with a sequence of musical notes reverberating in consciousness (or in the
visual perception of a speeding car). Rather, it is only an abstract
symbolization of movement, having a relation to the actuality of motion,
similar to that between a musical score and the actual experience of the
music itself.

If, as is commonly done, we take the above abstract symbolization as a
faithful representation of the actuality of movement we become entangled in
a series of confused and basically insoluble problems. These all have to do
with the image in which we represent time, as if it were a series of points
along a line that are somehow present together, either to our conceptual
gaze or perhaps that of God. Our actual experience is, however, that when a
given moment, say t_2, is present and actual, an earlier moment, such as t_1
is past. That is to say, it is *gone*, non-existent, never to return. So,
if we say that the velocity of a particular *now* (at t_2) is (x_2 - x_1) /
(t_2 - t_1) we are trying to relate *what is* (i.e., x_2 and t_2) to *what
is not* (i.e., x_1 and t_1). We can of course do this *abstractly and
symbolically* (as is, indeed, the common practice in science and
mathematics), but the further fact, not comprehended in this abstract
symbolism, is that the velocity *now* is active *now* (e.g., it determines
how a particle will act from now on, in itself, and in relation to other
particles). How are we to understand the *present activity* of a position
(x_1) now non-existent and gone for ever?

It is commonly thought that this problem is resolved by the differential
calculus. What is done here is to let the time interval, delta t = t_2 -
t_1 become vanishingly small, along with delta x = x_2 - x_1. The velocity
*now* is defined as the limit of the ratio delta x / delta t as delta t
approaches zero. It is then implied that the problem described above no
longer arises, because x_2 and x_1 are in effect taken at the same time.
They may thus be present together and related in an activity that depends on
both.

A little reflection shows, however, that this procedure is still as abstract
and symbolic as was the original one in which the time interval was taken as
finite. Thus one has no immediate experience of a time interval of zero
length, nor can one see in terms of reflective thought what this could mean.

Even as an abstract formalism, this approach is not fully consistent in a
logical sense, nor does it have a universal range of applicability. Indeed,
it applies only within the area of *continuous* movements and then only as a
technical algorithm that happens to be correct for this sort of movement.
As we have seen, however, according to the quantum theory, movement is *not*
fundamentally continuous. So even as an algorithm its current field of
application is limited to theories expressed in terms of classical concepts
(i.e., in the explicate order) in which it provides a good approximation for
the purpose of calculating the movements of material objects.

When we think of movement in terms of the implicate order, however, these
problems do not arise. In this order, movement is comprehended in terms of
a series of inter-penetrating and intermingling elements in different
degrees of enfoldment *all present together*. The activity of this movement
then presents no difficulty, because it is an outcome of this whole enfolded
order, and it is determined by relationships of co-present elements, rather
than by the relationships of elements that exist to others that no longer
exist.

We see, then, that through thinking in terms of the implicate order, we come
to a notion of movement that is logically coherent and that properly
represents our immediate experience of movement. Thus the sharp break
between abstract logical thought and concrete immediate experience, that has
pervaded our culture for so long, need no longer be maintained. Rather, the
possibility is created for an unbroken flowing movement from immediate
experience to logical thought and back, and thus for an ending t this kind
of fragmentation.

Moreover we are now able to understand in a new and more consistent way our
proposed notion concerning the general nature of reality, that *what is* is
movement. Actually, what tends to make it difficult for us to work in terms
of this notion is that we usually think of movement in the traditional way
as an active relationship of what is to what is not. Our traditional notion
concerning the general nature of reality would then amount to saying that
*what is* is an active relationship of what is to what is not. To say this
is, at the very least, confused. In terms of the implicate order, however,
movement is a relationship of certain phases of *what is* to other phases of
*what is*, that are in different stages of enfoldment. This notion implies
that the essence of reality as a whole is the above relationship among the
various phases in different stages of enfoldment (rather than, for example,
a relationship between various particles and fields that are all explicate
and manifest).

Of course, actual movement involves more than the mere immediate intuitive
sense of unbroken flow, which is our mode of directly experiencing the
implicate order. The presence of such a sense of flow generally implies
further that, in the next moment, the state of affairs will actually change
- i.e., it will be different. How are we to understand this fact of
experience in terms of the implicate order?

A valuable clue is provided by reflecting on and giving careful attention to
what happens when, in our thinking, we say that one set of ideas *implies*
an entirely different set. Of course, the word 'imply' has the same root as
the word 'implicate' and thus also involves the notion of enfoldment.
Indeed, by saying that something is *implicit* we generally mean more than
merely to say that this thing is an inference following from something else
through the rules of logic. Rather, we usually mean that from many
different ideas and notions (of some of which we are explicitly conscious) a
new notion emerges that somehow brings all these together in a concrete and
undivided whole.

We see, then, that each moment of consciousness has a certain *explicit*
content, which is a foreground, and an *implicit* content, which is a
corresponding background. We now propose that not only is immediate
experience best understood in terms of the implicate order, but that thought
also is basically to be comprehended in this order. Here we mean not just
the *content* of thought for which we have already begun to use the
implicate order. Rather, we also mean that the actual *structure*,
*function* and *activity* of thought is in the implicate order. The
distinction between implicit and explicit in thought is thus being taken
here to be essentially equivalent to the distinction between implicate and
explicate in matter in general.



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