Implicate and explicate order
As he wrote: The notion of implicate and explicate orders emphasizes the primacy of structure and process over individual objects.
[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."
[4] Bohm, his co-worker Basil Hiley, and other physicists of Birkbeck College worked toward a model of quantum physics in which the implicate order is represented in the form of an appropriate algebra or other pregeometry.
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.
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.
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.
The implicate order represents the proposal of a general metaphysical concept in terms of which it is claimed that matter and consciousness might both be understood, in the sense that it is proposed that both matter and consciousness: (i) enfold the structure of the whole within each region, and (ii) involve continuous processes of enfoldment and unfoldment.
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].
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.
In another analogy, Bohm asks us to consider a pattern produced by making small cuts in a folded piece of paper and then, literally, unfolding it.
Widely separated elements of the pattern are, in actuality, produced by the same original cut in the folded piece of paper.
Bohm and Peat emphasize the role of orders of varying complexity, which influence the perception of a work of art as a whole.
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.
On this, Bohm noted of prevailing views among physicists that "the world is assumed to be constituted of a set of separately existent, indivisible, and unchangeable 'elementary particles', which are the fundamental 'building blocks' of the entire universe ... there seems to be an unshakable faith among physicists that either such particles, or some other kind yet to be discovered, will eventually make possible a complete and coherent explanation of everything" (Bohm 1980, p. 173).
According to Bohm, a vivid image of this sense of analysis of the whole is afforded by vortex structures in a flowing stream.
On this, Bohm 1980, p. 81 said, "... it should be kept in mind that before this proposal was made there had existed the widespread impression that no conception of any hidden variable at all, not even if it were abstract and hypothetical, could possibly be consistent with the quantum theory."
