Chapter Four

THE HOLOMOVEMENT

Bohm's quantum theory centered on the idea of unbroken wholeness denies the dominant picture of the world made up of separate and independent parts. His theories of the implicate order and the holomovement do the same. In this chapter I will explain and develop the related concepts of unbroken wholeness, implicate order and holomovement. I will also mention how the Birkbeck physicists model them mathematically. They are ideas that, according to Frescura and Hiley, offer an alternative framework to the usual quantum theory and relativity. Further, they provide "new insights into physical processes."<192>

THE IMPLICATE AND EXPLICATE ORDERS

Bohm tells us that the Greek period of science had its own idea of order. Its concern was with perfection right out to the circles of the heavens. The Newtonian order, centered on mechanical movement, replaced this. Cartesian co-ordinates express it. Relativity physics uses it, as does quantum physics in assuming locality and certain things about a quantum system's wave function. Quantum theory does embody unbroken wholeness and is far from Cartesian. To Bohm's mind, however, it does not go far enough.

The Birkbeck School uses the idea of a system to describe unbroken wholeness. It sees subsystems and the systems that include them forming chains up to the whole universe. Classical physics studies each part of the universe as separate. The parts come together to explain systems, and the world consists of independent systems. The Birkbeck School, on the other hand, sees each part connecting with every other part at least at the quantum level. It looks at the relations between the parts and takes the qualities of a part as depending on the whole. Thus, a subsystem depends on the systems that include it, and to explain a system requires more than its subsystems. The whole universe, the School continues, is the basic reality; the whole comes first. For practical purposes, physicists may study the separate parts; but these are only temporary approximations.<193>

The emphasis on dependency is what Bohm calls wholeness of form. A complete description is never possible since every system is in a supersystem. A theory that claims it is complete has closed itself off from the unknown whole into which everything merges.<194>

The idea of a system is only one way Bohm develops the idea of unbroken wholeness. Another revolves around the idea of the holomovement. The holomovement is basic to reality; "What is is the holomovement."<195>

The holomovement model for reality comes from the properties of a holographic image of an object. This forms on a photographic plate by capturing the interaction or interference pattern of two portions of a laser light beam. One portion of the beam reflects off the object; the other off a mirror. Lighting the photographic plate (the hologram) with a laser will produce an image of the object that has three dimensions. In addition, lighting any portion of the hologram produces an image of the whole object. When lighting a piece of the plate the image will have less detail than when lighting the whole plate. The smaller the portion of the plate lit up, the less the detail. The point is still the same: any portion of a hologram contains information on the whole object imaged.<196>

The hologram analogy expresses the two essential properties of the holomovement.

Movement

The major point about the hologram, according to Bohm, is not the photographic plate. Rather, it is that movement is always taking place.<197> Light waves from the laser are continually interfering with those reflected off the object. The interference pattern is a moving web of the light waves interacting with each other in that region of space. The holographic plate captures a record of the moving pattern. Thus, the first aspect of the holomovement to notice has to do with the movement part of the word. The Birkbeck School does not take something static and rigid as the basis for their new order. They want to build it on activity.<198>

There is, according to Bohm, a more primitive level of perception than that of objects. Movement, or change, or breaks in regular arrangements, are basic. Psychological and neurological research shows the common-sense idea of unchanging objects to be a device we learn in early childhood. We also learn to think of them as primary - an approach classical physics mirrors.<199> Our minds make stabler and simpler forms from the confusing mass of movements we sense. From these, we in turn build the objects we see as relatively fixed or slowly moving.

Grammar also mirrors this object metaphysics that our culture conditions us to accept. For instance, the noun, the indicator of an object, has a primary grammatical role. Verbs, which call attention to action, have a secondary status. Bohm wants us to stop taking objects as primitive. He wants to give the basic role to the verb and think of nouns as creations from verbs. Thus Bohm's new approach to language emphasizes movement and activity, as does his approach to physics.<200>

Wholeness

The second emphasis of Bohm's holomovement idea is undivided or unbroken wholeness. The word holomovement uses the prefix holo from the Greek word meaning whole. The movement Bohm takes as basic is an unbroken and undivided whole.<201>

The wholeness parts of the holomovement idea draw on the hologram analogy.<202> The photographic plate of the hologram records the interference pattern of the light present in its region of space. Within this pattern, and therefore in the plate, is the whole lit up object. The same is true for any part of the plate. The light in each region of space carries information on the whole lit-up object.<203> Applying this to the holomovement, Bohm suggests each region of space and time somehow contains the total order of the universe. This includes the past, the present, and the future.<204> The movement of the holomovement carries information on all parts of reality.

The holomovement is the basis for reality and is an unbroken and undivided whole. All forms of it merge; we cannot separate them. In the holomovement's wholeness, nothing limits it. This means we cannot define or measure it because to describe or specify it is to divide it. In turn, this suggests a theory can only concentrate on an aspect of the holomovement important in a limited context. Only through the holomovement's particular appearances is it known, and then only partially.<205>

Are there tests for judging between wholeness ideas and the usual reducing of everything to separate parts? Jammer says yes. He points to the work of A.J. Leggett on quantum effects that appear in the macroscopic world. To apply quantum physics to a system at this level, one has to consider its complexity and its interaction with its environment.<206> Wholeness is an essence of the world.

The Implicate Order

Bohm develops the wholeness idea of the implicate order. The word implicate comes from the verb to implicate, to enfold or fold inward. Reality as implicate means everything folds into everything. Each part contains folded within it information on every other part. Thus, any portion of implicate reality involves every other portion and contains the total structure of the universe, the whole.<207>

The implicate order is for Bohm a more general term than the holomovement. The holomovement is an example of the implicate order. It carries an implicate order.<208>

Unfolding into the Explicate Order

The implicate order, the holomovement, unfolds. Certain aspects of the holomovement lift into attention, come into relief.<209> It produces parts that appear independent. The explicate order is the reality made of these items. They create the stable, independent and lasting world of parts. They are the explicate order of our experience.

Having unfolded to become the explicate order, the implicate then folds back into itself. The process is ongoing; movement is what the holomovement is about.

Bohm points out that being part of the implicate order is relative. There is nothing absolute about folding into the implicate order or unfolding into an explicate order. One order does not unfold while another folds, but one folds in relation to the other. Bohm supplies an example. Take our own order of experience as explicate. Then the order of the electron, the wholeness order depicted in quantum theory, is implicate. Now take the electron's order as explicate. Then the order of our experience is implicate. In Bohm's eyes what counts is the relation between folding and unfolding. Thus for him, locality, the concept at the center of the EPR experiment, is not basic. Something very close to something else in one order may, in another order, be within all of time and space. No one order is more primary than any other.<210>

The unfolding of the implicate order to form the explicate needs further discussion.

According to Bohm, when you describe something you begin with the holomovement. Then you draw from the holomovement a situation broad enough to make the description adequate. So the context itself plays an active role in unfolding the aspects of the holomovement important to it. Certain aspects are important for the context, while others are not.

So in most contexts the implicate order does not fully become an explicate order. Only glimpses of the implicate order's shadow - the explicate order - are usually possible. Everything does not unfold at once. Further, for a particular situation there may be several different explicate orders that cannot emerge together. This contrasts with the Cartesian view. Here some all-including intelligence (God) can in principle embrace everything at any moment.<211>

What unfolds from the implicate order into the explicate appears as incomplete and independent parts. That does not mean the explicate order loses all of the wholeness of the implicate. Holonomy (the law of the whole) always limits the breaking of a situation into independent parts. They come from a more basic whole and in the end are not separate.<212> Thus, what unfolds from the holomovement for a particular context is, in Bohm's terms, an ensemble. In it each part ideally relates to the whole.<213>

THE QUANTUM POTENTIAL, NONLOCALITY, AND THE QUANTUM PRINCIPLE

The Birkbeck School proceeds to rewrite quantum theory equipped with the set of ideas centered on the holomovement. This is a step further back than creating hidden variables or quantum potential theories. Their task is to create a more general metaphysics which becomes a mathematical theory. In turn this produces Bohm's physical theories. One can also look at it as creating a more general metaphysics that supports the physical theories. The last section of this chapter explores the mathematical approach, while this section looks at the metaphysics-to-physics procedure. In particular, it discusses how three key physical ideas arise from the holomovement theory. They are the quantum principle, nonlocality, and the quantum potential.<214>

In the Cartesian scheme, change comes from the rearrangement of elementary particles. Quantum events, on the other hand, suggest the particle is not basic. It comes from something deeper. The Birkbeck physicists think that what is deeper is the quantum potential. It does not operate as though objects were separate and independent. It combines their properties in a way that does not break down to something else.<215>

Frescura and Hiley also consider an illusion the classical view that objects are permanent. What is essential about an object is not its stability. Rather, the quantum potential idea says continuous form is essential. An object is an object because it takes on the same form in its recreations moment by moment. It does this continuously. Anything from a particle upwards in complexity appears as a semi-independent, near stable movement. This movement in turn lies within the whole which is itself a process.<216>

With such radical implications, the quantum potential idea is more than an alternative description of quantum events. Frescura and Hiley suggest it requires us to change our outlook. What we need is a different framework of ideas to create a context for it. We need one centered on the holomovement.

The holomovement suggests reality does not consist of static objects. It is structured activity, but the activity is not the movement of objects. Frescura and Hiley explain this in the following way. Not all the properties of an object appear at once. Its inner structure is always unfolding from the holomovement, producing new properties.<217> Thus, the movement is the continuous arising of qualities from something basic, the holomovement. Only the total environment of the object restricts this process.

With such properties, the holomovement forms an apt basis for its unfolded expression as the quantum potential.

The quantum potential produces nonlocality, reiterate Bohm and Hiley. The older approach made locality an absolute. Now one has to rid from one's mind the image of individual particles. All parts of a quantum system connect nonlocally with each other. It is a changing whole organized by the quantum potential.<218>

Locality for the Birkbeck physicists is a relation between the implicate and explicate orders. It is as in the hologram. Here the local features observed in the object do not link locally; they are in every portion of it. The hologram stores locality nonlocally.<219>

Connections between elements in the holomovement are similar, but even more extreme. They are neither local nor nonlocal, but are alocal or neutral concerning locality. The nonlocal correlations shown by the EPR experiment come from the more basic alocal connections of the holomovement.<220>

There are close connections between the two pairs of terms, locality/nonlocality and explicate/implicate (or holomovement).

Locality is a restriction, a special or limiting case of nonlocality. Nonlocality, for instance, does not rule out local influences, but universal locality rules out nonlocal ones.

Similarly, the explicate order emerges from the implicate yet is also within the implicate. This is because the implicate order allows for separation of events while they relate within a larger system. On the other hand, the explicate does not accept that everything relates to everything else.

Nonlocality, allowing as it does for instantaneous correlations, is similar to an implicate order. It suggests one way for relating everything in an implicate order. That nonlocality and the implicate order or holomovement have this in common is not surprising since Bohm uses the implicate order idea to explain nonlocality.

As the holomovement theory explains nonlocality, so it also explains the quantum principle.<221> How can common sense understand the participation of the observer in the observed, when it thinks they are distinct? One has to stop thinking of an experiment as investigating a property of something that exists separately. The observed object and observing instrument, according to the Birkbeck theory, are really aspects of a single overall pattern. So are experimental conditions and experimental results. Each comes out from the holomovement and as such ties in closely to the whole. The object observed, the apparatus, and the observer form a whole that makes analysis into parts misleading.<222> "This whole flows and merges into the totality of the universe, including the human observer."<223>

The members of the Birkbeck School rebuild quantum theory from their informal language centered on the holomovement. They do not assume complementarity or the uncertainty principle, believing the usual quantum physics wrongly leans here on the Newtonian approach. The holographic image, they claim, is more adequate for the reality quantum theory describes.<224>

MATHEMATICAL MODELS FOR THE HOLOMOVEMENT

The laws of physics have to now referred to the explicate order. In fact, a chief function of the Cartesian co-ordinate frames is to provide a clear and precise description of the explicate order.<225> Unfortunately, it does this by assuming a continuous space and time made up of points with no volume. This belief does not fit with the idea of nonlocality. Bohm is therefore seeking a mathematics to replace calculus, the means for describing the Cartesian order. This mathematics will help him rewrite the laws of physics so their primary reference is to the implicate rather than to the explicate order. He aims to express the holomovement ideas in a precise and mathematical way. He also wants to try explaining everything with the holomovement.<226> Physics will then be free from what he sees are its current contradictions and confusion.<227>

The Birkbeck School first put the holomovement ideas into mathematics in 1970. They used the language of homology and cohomology theory which does not assume an underlying space-time continuum.<228> This approach, they feel, unearthed "very suggestive ideas" which neatly fit with existing theory. They were also able to provide a partial mathematical expression for the unbreakable connection between the world we observe and the holomovement. It even introduced the wholeness feature as well as allowing the idea of individual objects. However, they conclude, it only had a remote hope of realizing their long-range goal, and did not capture the essential "active ingredient" of the holomovement.<229>

One of Bohm's publications putting the ideas of the implicate-explicate orders into mathematical form appeared in 1973. He suggests the algebra as the most appropriate mathematical tool, for several reasons. First, a continuum with its division of space into points with no volume is not a basis for an algebra. Second, an algebra is at the mathematical root of quantum physics. Third, it allows for two different operations, addition and multiplication. The two can describe sequences of events as well as interactions between them. Thus, the attention of Bohm, Hiley, and their partners in the Birkbeck School is toward finding a suitable algebra. They believe an algebra can adequately describe reality and its holomovement.<230>

In particular, the School wants an algebra to represent the quantum world. Their first try involved combinatorial topology. As related above, they gave up on this. They then turned their attention to the structures supporting the Clifford and simplictic algebras. Papers by Frescura and Hiley are examples. They ask themselves whether they can put the quantum theory completely in the algebraic form. Further, they ask whether this can be done so there are no distinctions between the observer and the observed. This would make it possible to understand quantum theory using the implicate order, using process. They conclude it is possible.<231> Hiley's more recent work suggests their algebraic approach is also important for quantum cosmology and quantum gravity.<232>

The metaphysical ideas have come first; the mathematics second. It is not a matter of creating a mathematics out of a set of fixed ideas. It is more of a two-way process. The mathematics and the metaphysics, in Bohm's view, are only aspects of a single whole. For them to work well together, they have to be similar in certain ways. They will also be different in others; the mathematical side, for instance, is potentially more precise.<233>

Their new approach excites the Birkbeck scholars with the chance of putting the implicate order into a mathematical form. Still their program needs to find experimental support or acceptance in the physics community. Whether it will succeed, is an open question.<234>