Implicate and explicate order

Implicate order and explicate order are

In Bohm's Wholeness and the Implicate Order, he used these notions to describe how the appearance of such phenomena might appear differently, or might be characterized by, varying principal factors, depending on contexts such as scales.^[2] The implicate (also referred to as the "enfolded") order is seen as a deeper and more fundamental order of reality. In contrast, the explicate or "unfolded" order includes the abstractions that humans normally perceive. As he wrote:

In the enfolded [or implicate] order, space and time are no longer the dominant factors determining the relationships of dependence or independence of different elements. Rather, an entirely different sort of basic connection of elements is possible, from which our ordinary notions of space and time, along with those of separately existent material particles, are abstracted as forms derived from the deeper order. These ordinary notions in fact appear in what is called the "explicate" or "unfolded" order, which is a special and distinguished form contained within the general totality of all the implicate orders (Bohm 1980, p. xv).

Overview

The notion of implicate and explicate orders emphasizes the primacy of structure and process over individual objects. The latter are seen as mere approximations of an underlying process. In this approach, quantum particles and other objects are understood to have only a limited degree of stability and autonomy.^[3]

Bohm believed that the weirdness of the behavior of quantum particles is caused by unobserved forces, maintaining that space and time might actually be derived from an even deeper level of objective reality. In the words of F. David Peat, Bohm considered that what we take for reality are "surface phenomena, explicate forms that have temporarily unfolded out of an underlying implicate order." That is, the implicate order is the ground from which reality emerges.^[4]

The implicate order as an algebra

Bohm, his co-worker

In analogy to Alfred North Whitehead's notion of "actual occasion,"^[7] Bohm considered the notion of moment – a moment being a not entirely localizable event, with events being allowed to overlap ^[8] and being connected in an overall implicate order:^[9]

I propose that each moment of time is a projection from the total implicate order. The term projection is a particularly happy choice here, not only because its common meaning is suitable for what is needed, but also because its mathematical meaning as a projection operation, P, is just what is required for working out these notions in terms of the quantum theory.

Bohm emphasized the primary role of the implicate order's structure:^[10]

My attitude is that the mathematics of the quantum theory deals primarily with the structure of the implicate pre-space and with how an explicate order of space and time emerges from it, rather than with movements of physical entities, such as particles and fields. (This is a kind of extension of what is done in general relativity, which deals primarily with geometry and only secondarily with the entities that are described within this geometry.)

The explicate order and quantum entanglement

Central to Bohm's schema are correlations between observables of entities which seem separated by great distances in the explicate order (such as a particular electron here on Earth and an alpha particle in one of the stars in the Abell 1835 galaxy, then a possible candidate for farthest galaxy from Earth known to humans), manifestations of the implicate order. Within quantum theory, there is entanglement of such objects.

This view of order necessarily departs from any notion which entails signalling, and therefore causality. The correlation of observables does not imply a causal influence, and in Bohm's schema, the latter represents 'relatively' independent events in spacetime; and therefore explicate order.

A common grounding for consciousness and matter

The implicate order represents the proposal of a general

As in our discussion of matter in general, it is now necessary to go into the question of how in consciousness the explicate order is what is manifest ... the manifest content of consciousness is based essentially on memory, which is what allows such content to be held in a fairly constant form. Of course, to make possible such constancy it is also necessary that this content be organized, not only through relatively fixed association but also with the aid of the rules of logic, and of our basic categories of space, time, causality, universality, etc. ... there will be a strong background of recurrent, stable, and separable features, against which the transitory and changing aspects of the unbroken flow of experience will be seen as fleeting impressions that tend to be arranged and ordered mainly in terms of the vast totality of the relatively static and fragmented content of [memories].[11]

Bohm also claimed that "as with consciousness, each moment has a certain explicate order, and in addition it enfolds all the others, though in its own way. So the relationship of each moment in the whole to all the others is implied by its total content: the way in which it 'holds' all the others enfolded within it." Bohm characterises consciousness as a process in which at each moment, content that was previously implicate is presently explicate, and content which was previously explicate has become implicate.

One may indeed say that our memory is a special case of the process described above, for all that is recorded is held enfolded within the brain cells and these are part of matter in general. The recurrence and stability of our own memory as a relatively independent sub-totality is thus brought about as part of the very same process that sustains the recurrence and stability in the manifest order of matter in general. It follows, then, that the explicate and manifest order of consciousness is not ultimately distinct from that of matter in general.^[12]

Analogies

Ink droplet analogy

Bohm also used the term unfoldment to characterise processes in which the explicate order becomes relevant (or "relevated"). Bohm likens unfoldment also to the decoding of a television

Bohm employed the

There is the germ of a new notion of order here. This order is not to be understood solely in terms of a regular arrangement of objects (e.g., in rows) or as a regular arrangement of events (e.g., in a series). Rather, a total order is contained, in some implicit sense, in each region of space and time. Now, the word 'implicit' is based on the verb 'to implicate'. This means 'to fold inward' ... so we may be led to explore the notion that in some sense each region contains a total structure 'enfolded' within it".^[13]

Bohm noted that, although the hologram conveys undivided wholeness, it is nevertheless static.

In this view of order, laws represent invariant relationships between explicate entities and structures, and thus Bohm maintained that, in physics, the explicate order generally reveals itself within well-constructed experimental contexts as, for example, in the sensibly observable results of instruments. With respect to implicate order, however, Bohm asked us to consider the possibility instead "that physical law should refer primarily to an order of undivided wholeness of the content of description similar to that indicated by the hologram rather than to an order of analysis of such content into separate parts...".^[14]

Implicate order in art

In the work Science, Order, and Creativity (Bohm and Peat, 1987), examples of implicate orders in science are laid out, as well as implicate orders which relate to painting, poetry and music.

Bohm and Peat emphasize the role of orders of varying complexity, which influence the perception of a work of art as a whole. They note that implicate orders are accessible to human experience. They refer, for instance, to earlier notes which reverberate when listening to music, or various resonances of words and images which are perceived when reading or hearing poetry.

Christopher Alexander discussed his work in person with Bohm, and pointed out connections among his work and Bohm's notion of an implicate order in The Nature of Order.^[15]

Bohm features as a fictional character in the novel The Wave by British author Lochlan Bloom. The novel includes multiple narratives and explores many of the concepts of Bohm's work on implicate and explicate orders.^[16]

Challenges to some generally prevailing views

In proposing this new notion of order, Bohm explicitly challenged a number of tenets that he believed are fundamental to much scientific work:

1. that phenomena are reducible to
   quantum states
   , or static entities of some other nature;
2. related to (1), that human knowledge is most fundamentally concerned with
   statistical
   aggregates of particles;
3. that an analysis or description of any aspect of
   domain
   of relevance;
4. that the
   curvilinear
   system, is the deepest conception of underlying order as a basis for analysis and description of the world;
5. that there is ultimately a sustainable distinction between reality and thought, and that there is a corresponding distinction between the observer and observed in an experiment or any other situation (other than a distinction between relatively separate entities valid in the sense of explicate order); and
6. that it is, in
   Theory of Everything
   .

Bohm's proposals have at times been dismissed largely on the basis of such tenets. His

...in relativity, movement is continuous, causally determinate and well defined, while in quantum mechanics it is discontinuous, not causally determinate and not well-defined. Each theory is committed to its own notions of essentially static and fragmentary modes of existence (relativity to that of separate events connectible by signals, and quantum mechanics to a well-defined quantum state). One thus sees that a new kind of theory is needed which drops these basic commitments and at most recovers some essential features of the older theories as abstract forms derived from a deeper reality in which what prevails is unbroken wholeness.

Bohm maintained that relativity and quantum theories are in basic contradiction in these essential respects, and that a new concept of order should begin with that toward which both theories point: undivided wholeness. This should not be taken to mean that he advocated such powerful theories be discarded. He argued that each was relevant in a certain context—i.e., a set of interrelated conditions within the explicate order—rather than having unlimited scope, and that apparent contradictions stem from attempts to overgeneralize by superposing the theories on one another, implying greater generality or broader relevance than is ultimately warranted. Thus, Bohm 1980, pp. 156–167 argued: "... in sufficiently broad contexts such analytic descriptions cease to be adequate ... 'the law of the whole' will generally include the possibility of describing the 'loosening' of aspects from each other, so that they will be relatively autonomous in limited contexts ... however, any form of relative autonomy (and heteronomy) is ultimately limited by holonomy, so that in a broad enough context such forms are seen to be merely aspects, relevated in the holomovement, rather than disjoint and separately existent things in interaction."

Hidden variable theory

Before developing his implicit order approach, Bohm had proposed a

References

Notes