Dec 16, 2023 (gerald-baron.medium.com)
This is the fifth (I think) and (likely) last post on the physics and metaphysics of David Bohm and Basil Hiley as expressed in their 1993 book The Undivided Universe. Here we look at spiritual interpretations of the ideas of active information and the implicate order.
In the last three posts in this series I’ve tried to explain as best I can, with my non-science and math mind, what David Bohm and Basil Hiley call their “ontological interpretation” of quantum mechanics. To understand the ontology — what is real in their view — about quantum physics we need to get out of our Cartesian framework of seeing everything in a kind of grid of time and space. That’s because the entity that makes things real is not located in time and space, and the order within it is nothing like the things we normally consider ordered. What lies beneath everything resides in “pre-space” and is something they call the implicate order. Implicate refers to enfolded. Everything that is unfolds from that implicate order including the entire mental and physical landscape. What is real unfolds, has some but limited stability, and then enfolds back into the underlying order.
Quantum fields or particles, and for that matter our thoughts, demonstrate an unlimited number of possibilities. A particle is in superposition or a cloud of possibilities until it is “collapsed” or settled into something with specific properties and identity. This to Bohm and Hiley is the quantum potential or information on all possibilities. When particles appear with specific properties such as path, momentum, etc., they become part of the external world which is called “explicate.” Entanglement as a mystery disappears because entangled particles are simply part of the same quantum potential which is limited by neither time nor space.
Thoughts are also explicate realities arising from the implicate order. These are influenced or guided by active information, which is that part of the quantum potential which is selected out of all possibilities to create the thoughts and particles of our world of experience. There is continual interchange between the physical and mental realms because in essence they are the same realm, both guided by active information which serves as a bridge. This is the undivided universe, the one thing — the implicate order.
This summary cannot do justice to the deep and rich ideas just in this one book. Bohm developed the active information and implicate order ideas from 1952 to his death in 1992 in many different books, including some written with Krishnamurti with whom he had a productive relationship beginning in 1959.
The elephant in the room
There is an elephant in the room in all this. If this is a new kind of order and this order determines all that is including our thoughts and minds and our relationship with the material world, where does this order come from? What is the source of order? What can we know or deduce from the appearance of this order that has produced not only the vastness of this remarkable universe, but the rationality of thoughts of creatures who appeared in its recent history to describe, comprehend and perhaps even co-create it?
Max Planck (1858–1947) preceded David Bohm by about 50 years. In many ways he was the father of quantum physics and therefore the one who set all these big questions in motions. While Bohm and Hiley are somewhat coy about the transcendental implications of their ideas, Planck was more direct in his speech in 1944 in Florence called “The Nature of Matter”:
“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear-headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force is the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.”
There it is. Bohm and Hiley are very accomplished physicists and their audience was not people like me interested in the link between science and faith but fellow physicists, mathematicians and maybe philosophers. Their work is focused on showing how their ontological interpretation can be worked with known physics and math. Yet, they do stray into the overtly metaphysical with this: (p. 323–324)
“What may be suggested further is that such participation goes on to a greater collective mind, and perhaps ultimately to some yet more comprehensive mind in principle capable of going indefinitely beyond even the human species as a whole.”
Because of our deeply embedded physicalist way of thinking, we seem able to assume rather blithely that order just appears. After all, we see the order in crystals forming and we assume that the complexity of life is the result of some as of yet unknown emergent property of just the right chemicals in just the right soup. Our answers always point back to the laws of physics which present the regularity (order) needed for our world to work. Even evolution whereby life competes with and wins against entropy is seen by some as a universal law undergirding not only biology but essentially everything.
Where does this order come from? We must either do as David Chalmers did in his book Reality+ and punt on this question, or admit that order cannot be random. Isn’t it the opposite of random? Disorder appears to be the bottom state which all reduce to and yet we see order and more order.
Meaning as structure
Harald Atmanspacher, a physicist and psychologist at Freiburg, Germany, has been a primary explainer of the dual aspect monism idea, particularly that of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung. He coined their partnership on this concept the Pauli-Jung conjecture. His book, written with Dean Rickles, Dual Aspect Monism and the Deep Structure of Meaning dives deep into this idea dating back to ancient Greeks, through Spinoza and Russell to a number of physicists including Bohm and Hiley.
In an in depth analysis he shows how Pauli and Jung, Arthur Eddington, John Wheeler and Bohm and Hiley all essentially arrived at the same conclusions from quite different approaches. In particular John Wheeler’s ideas of meaning and pre-geometry combined with his participatory universe idea are reflected in the Bohm-Hiley view we have been studying. As the title of their book suggests, Atmanspacher and Rickles consider that all these various ideas about the underlying structure of reality — mind and matter — can be brought together through the concept of meaning.
But, what is meaning?
In the introduction to their book, Atmanspacher and Rickles explain the meaning of meaning in terms of reference and sense. Reference refers to connection of mental concepts to their physical referents (I think of a rock), and sense is:
“…used for the connection of both the mental and the physical with their underlying psychophysically neutral domain…”
That, of course, refers to the substrate of mind and matter which is the heart of dual aspect monism. Their understanding of meaning is largely focused on the deep connection between mind and matter. But they refer to the famous philosopher-psychologist (and teacher of Freud and Husserl) Franz Brentano. The concept of intentionality as taught by Brentano features into the concept of meaning: (p. 166)
“Within standard representational accounts in the philosophy of mind, meaning is usually expressed as a relationship between some mental representation and an objective external reality. Brentano (1874) coined the notion of intentionality for such a reference relation of aboutness, and Husserl (1900) developed it in more detail.”
Atmanspacher and Rickles get closer to our common understanding of meaning with this: (p. 154)
“Prima facie, meaning is a relation linking something that means to something that is meant, so it must be expected to manifest itself in certain types of correlations.”
Meaning involves something happening between two or more parties that conveys something that is meaningful, something that changes things even in small ways. The idea of intentionality is crucial, it seems. Yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater is meaningful. The meaning of that may vary from a desire to save lives, to a desire to cause needless pandemonium.
It seems obvious, at least intuitive, that meaning requires intelligence, consciousness and intention. If Atmanspacher and Rickles are right that the underlying structure that all the philosophers and scientists they quote claim exists is really about meaning, then it is about the underlying existence of something intelligent, conscious, and with intentions.
I understand credibility within the science and philosophy community makes it difficult or impossible to say, hey, beneath it all I think I discovered there is intelligence, consciousness and intentionality. That would almost be like yelling “Fire!” during a major science conflab. Yet, Bohm and Hiley come very close when they talk of a “collective mind” or “comprehensive mind” as quoted above. Wheeler comes close as well.
As we have seen even in some recent Medium writing, for some this is a dangerous conclusion which undermines the physicalist belief system. That’s enough for some to reject their entire argument, no matter the scientific and logical rigor of it.
Mind-stuff and the spiritual domain
It is Eddington who dares mention the elephant in the room. He provided the 1927 Gifford Lectures and published those as The Nature of the Physical World. Eddington was the primary early proponent and explainer of Einstein’s new relativity theories and empirically proved in 1919 the strange idea that warping spacetime meant that gravity would bend light. Although quantum physics was in its very early exciting pioneering days, he understood as few others what the implications were.
In his lectures he struggled to try to communicate to a mostly non-scientific audience just what the strange new world of quantum physics meant: (p. 12)
“The frank realisation that physical science is concerned with a world of shadows is one of the most significant of recent advances…It is difficult to school ourselves to treat the physical world as purely symbolic.”
He could not have been more clear in his conclusion: (p. 274)
“To put the conclusion crudely — the stuff of the world is mind-stuff.”
The “shadows”, “symbols” and “pointer-readings” that we somehow interpret as hard, physical reality are “attached to some unknown background,” Eddington says. This unknown background is mind-stuff, but what is that? He points out that attaching these shadows to something concrete is “silly.” Contemporary philosopher Galen Strawson quoted this comment to buttress his argument for physicalist panpsychism. But, panpsychism is not Eddington’s view. The mind-stuff or unknown background has a different source: (p. 278–279)
“The physical atom is, like everything else in physics, a schedule of pointer readings. The schedule is, we agree, attached to some unknown background. Why not then attach it to something of spiritual nature of which a prominent characteristic is thought. It seems rather silly to prefer to attach it to something of a so-called ‘concrete’ nature inconsistent with thought, and then to wonder where the thought comes from.”
Eddington might be surprised to see how this silly idea of attaching our thoughts to the “so-called concrete nature” of matter not only persists but dominates thinking today. Our thoughts, rather than arising from the “concrete” world of brain matter, reflect a spiritual world that is the foundation of all, Eddington says. This is also expressed even more explicitly: (p. 258)
“This view of the relation of the material to the spiritual world perhaps relieves to some extent a tension between science and religion. Physical science has seemed to occupy a domain of reality which is self-sufficient, pursuing its course independently of and indifferent to that which a voice within us asserts to be a higher reality.”
This comment is important in view of what is perhaps even more true of today than 1927. The loud, persistent voices of physicalism claiming that physical reality exists in its self-sufficiency drown out those voices within us that says there is Something More, there is a higher reality. Eddington lets that inner voice be heard. Despite the efforts by many to drown out the inner voice, there are strong indications that perhaps more and more are tiring of the physicalist persistence.
Eddington is not alone in suggesting that the substrate of mind and matter is of a spiritual nature. Pauli and Jung, according to Atmanspacher and Rickles, called it the Unus Mundus (one world) and considered it a placeholder for the divine. Hegel talked about the Absolute. As we’ve noted Bohm and Hiley suggest a cosmic or comprehensive mind, and consider that it is ultimate and undivided –– and beyond the reach of science. Wheeler was not overtly spiritual but Atmanspacher and Rickles see strong connection to the spiritual world in his thinking on pre-geometry: (p. 83)
“In each case, however, the subjective mental M and the objective physical P are bound together in a mutual embrace, coming from some deeper, psychophysically neutral reality PPN, called “pregeometry” by Wheeler and the “spiritual domain” by Eddington, who saw in this reality a role for mysticism.”
The implicate Spirit
As a more less traditional theist I look to find a connection between what has been considered in my tradition the two books of revelation: Holy Scripture and the book of the natural world. Both are considered ways of understanding ultimate reality and truth. If that is so, they should not conflict.
In some recent streams of theistic and Christian thought, fundamentalism for example, strict literalist interpretations of Holy Scripture definitely do conflict. Evidence for the age of the earth and the age of the universe is compelling in my mind, so those understandings or interpretations of scripture are considered in error by me and those who share my interest in consonance.
Theologian Ian Barbour (1923–2013) identified four ways in which science and religion can interact: conflict, independence, dialogue, and integration. My preference is integration. I reject the separate “magisterium” of Stephen Jay Gould, which is the independence option. But there are a couple of different ways of approaching integration: one through science and one through biblical revelation or theology. One starts from science and asks what science may teach us about spiritual realities. The other is the Augustinian approach reflected in Rene Descartes, the credu ut intelligam approach: “I believe so that I may understand.”
Physicists such as Bohm and Hiley, Eddington, Polkinghorne, Planck and many others arrived at the conclusion of cosmic unity, mind or spiritual reality through their understanding of science. They say go deep enough into science and mathematics and you come to something foundational, something ineffable, something intelligent, conscious and intentional.
I should say that the “intentional” part may not be acceptable to all those subscribing to the dual aspect monism idea of a unity underlying mind and matter. Bohm was strongly influenced by the Eastern religious thinker Krishnamurti likely reflected in the ideas of an undivided universe. Others, such as Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Capra and more have connected the mysterious realities of quantum physics to eastern thought. I have a hard time seeing how intelligence and consciousness operating out of the ineffable foundation beneath mind and matter could result in the universe and conscious beings today without intention. If there is an underlying structure of meaning as these ideas teach, then it must be as Brentano and Husserl thought that intentionality is essential.
Consider this comment by former atheist and Oxford philosopher Keith Ward from his book Personal Idealism: (p. 10)
“If some ultimate mind, which knows all possibilities, knows which are good, acts to realise some good states, and enjoys them, that would be a completely satisfactory explanation of why the cosmos exists. That is the hypothesis of God.”
The implicate order is or holds information in the form of the quantum potential. It “knows” all possibilities. It acts to realize those possibilities in mind and matter through active information. There is good reason to believe that the implicate order, as collective or comprehensive mind, also enjoys good states.
Is it God? Yes and no. God in the traditional theistic understanding of Abrahamic faiths stands outside of time and space but operates within it. God is transcendent and immanent in theological parlance. The very beginning of Genesis says that creation (the earth) was chaos — formless and empty. But the Spirit of God “hovered” over the chaos.
In my view that hovering Spirit is the implicate order. It is from that comprehensive mind of Spirit (intelligence, consciousness, intention) that all things that can be are held and that which is emerges. Thoughts and rocks. Feelings and galaxies. Qualia and quanta. These words, this laptop, the fire in my family room, are all enfolded in that Spirit and then unfolded in my experience. I am distinct as a self, and yet totally incorporated within that Spirit and with all things that emanate from it.
Spinoza equated God and nature, although in later writing it is understood he took more a panentheistic view than pantheistic. I’m guessing my suggestion here that God as the Source of Being stands outside of nature, yet is the ground of all things through the Spirit is a panentheistic view.
The Greek poet Aratas living in about 300 BCE said something truly profound. In an invocation to the god Zeus he said:
“In him we live, and move and have our being.”
It sounds familiar to Christian ears because it was repeated by Paul in a speech to the Athenian Greeks as quoted by the writer Luke in Acts 17. We cannot have our being in a concept of god or God in as limited a form as Zeus. But, the idea captures the meaning of Spirit as implicate order. We are in that order, arise from it in mind and in relation to all else that unfolds from it. We exist in, we have our being, as long as self persists. As we arise from it we return to it.
As far as that goes, that could be a Vedantan position as well as a theistic or Christian position. The question comes back to one of distinction and identity. When we are enfolded back into the reality of Spirit or the implicate order, are we who we are?
There is reason to contemplate that question.
Written by Gerald R. Baron
Dawdling at the intersection of faith, science, philosophy and theology.