Polynomial

Having demonstrated some ideas pertaining to perception and consciousness briefly in recent blogs, I would like to take the chance to draw on some valuable footage that seems to remain on the late David Joseph Bohm (20 December 1917 – 27 October 1992), who was a U.S. born British quantum physicist who made significant contributions in the fields of theoretical physics, philosophy and neuropsychology, as well as to the Manhattan Project.

He also draws pertinently on how a collage of World Views (particularly one that blends Eastern Philosophy with Western Science/Empiricism) will help humanity, as a Whole, posit a better understanding about how reality functions and, as a direct result, how We function within this reality… No doubt, once We have a more accurate understanding about our own position within this Universe, We will be able to function better and live in a mindful, peaceful, sustainable and ecological manner, here on planet Earth.

About David Bohm:

In 1950 David Bohm wrote what many physicists consider to be a model textbook on quantum mechanics. Ironically, he has never accepted that theory of physics. In the history of science he is a maverick, a member of that small group of physicists-including Albert Einstein, Eugene Wigner, Erwin Schrödinger, Alfred Lande, Paul Dirac, and John Wheeler–who have expressed grave doubts that a theory founded on indeterminism and chance could give us a true view of the universe around us.

Today’s generation of physicists, impressed by the stunning successes of quantum physics–from nuclear weapons to lasers-are of a different mind. They are busy applying quantum mechanics to areas its original creators never imagined. Stephen Hawking, for example, used it to describe the creation of elementary particles from black holes and to argue that the universe exploded into being in a quantum-mechanical event.

Bucking this tide of modern physics for more than 30 years, Bohm has been more than a gadfly. His objections to the foundations of quantum mechanics have gradually coalesced into an extension of the theory so sweeping that it amounts to a new view of reality. Believing that the nature of things is not reducible to fragments or particles, he argues for a holistic view of the universe. He demands that we learn to regard matter and life as a whole, coherent domain, which he calls the implicate order.

Most other physicists discard Bohm’s logic without bothering to scrutinize it. Part of the difficulty is that his implicate order is rife with paradox. Another problem is the sheer range of his ideas, which encompass such hitherto nonphysical subjects as consciousness, society, truth, language, and the process of scientific theory making itself.

The son of a furniture dealer, Bohm was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in 1917. He studied physics at the University of California with J. Robert Oppenheimer. Unwilling to testify against his former teacher and other friends during the McCarthy hearings, Bohm left the United States and took a post at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. From there he moved to Israel, then England, where he eventually became professor of physics at Birkbeck College in London.

Bohm is perhaps best known for his early work on the interactions of electrons in metals. He showed that their individual, haphazard movement concealed a highly organized and cooperative behavior called plasma oscillation. This intimation of an order underlying apparent chaos was pivotal in Bohm’s development.

In 1959 Bohm, working with Yakir Ahronov, showed that a magnetic field might alter the behavior of electrons without touching them: If two electron beams were passed on either side of a space containing a magnetic field, the field would retard the waves of one beam even though it did not penetrate the space and actually touch the electrons. This ‘AB effect” was verified a year later.

During the Fifties and Sixties Bohm expanded his belief in the existence of hidden variables that control seemingly random quantum events, and from that point on, his ideas diverged more and more from the mainstream of modern physics. His books Causality and Chance in Modern Physics and Wholeness and the Implicate Order, published in 1957 and 1980, respectively, spell out his new theory in considerable detail. In the Sixties Bohm met the Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, and their continuing dialogues, published as a book, The Ending of Time, helped the physicist clarify his ideas about wholeness and order.

To see where I sourced the above information from, please click here.

OR… To simply find out more about David Bohm and what he got up to while he was here on Earth, please click here.