- Google AI Overview
The terms implicate, explicate, and super-implicate refer to physicist David Bohm‘s model of reality, where the explicate order is our familiar world of separate objects and events (unfolded), the implicate order is a deeper, enfolded reality where everything is interconnected (like information in a hologram), and the super-implicate is an even deeper, more fundamental level of this enfolded whole, suggesting infinite nested layers of reality, all interconnected through a process called the holomovement.
The Orders Explained
- Explicate Order (Unfolded):
- This is the world we perceive with our senses and classical physics describes: distinct, separate objects, locations in space, and sequences in time (e.g., a table, a planet, you).
- It’s the “unfolded” manifestation of deeper patterns.
- Implicate Order (Enfolded):
- A deeper, more fundamental level where everything is interconnected and “enfolded” into a single, undivided whole (the “holomovement”).
- Information about the entire universe is contained within every point, much like a hologram.
- Our perceived reality (explicate) arises from and enfolds back into this deeper order.
- Super-Implicate & Beyond:
- Bohm proposed that reality isn’t just two layers but potentially infinite, with the super-implicate being a level even more subtle and general than the implicate order.
- These layers represent increasing levels of wholeness and abstraction, with the ultimate reality being the totality of all implicate orders.
Analogy: The Droplet
Imagine a drop of ink in a viscous fluid. When the fluid is stirred one way, the drop stretches into an invisible thread (implicate order). When stirred the other way, the thread reforms the original drop (explicate order), showing how the whole (implicate) contains the parts (explicate).
Key Idea
Everything in the explicate order is a temporary, localized manifestation of the deeper, unbroken wholeness of the implicate order, which itself is part of even deeper, super-implicate structures.