A More Radical Departure

During this same period of his life Bohm also continued to refine his alternative approach to quantum physics. As he looked more carefully into the meaning of the quantum potential he discovered it had a number of features that implied an even more radical departure from orthodox thinking.

One was the importance of wholeness. Classical science had always viewed the state of a system as a whole as merely the result of the interaction of its parts. However, the quantum potential stood this view on its ear and indicated that the behavior of the parts was actually organized by the whole.

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This not only took Bohr's assertion that subatomic particles are not independent "things" but are part of an indivisible system one step further, but even suggested that wholeness was in some ways the more primary reality.

A even more surprising feature of the quantum potential was its implications for the nature of location.

At the level of our everyday lives things have very specific locations, but Bohm's interpretation of quantum physics indicated that at the subquantum level, the level in which the quantum potential operated, location ceased to exist.

All points in space became equal to all other points of in space, and it was meaningless to speak of anything as being separate from anything else. Physicists call this property "nonlocality."

The nonlocal aspect of the quantum potential enabled Bohm to explain the connection between twin particles without violating special relativity's ban against anything traveling faster than the speed of light.

Enter John Stewart Bell

Bohm's ideas still left most physicists unperswaded, but did stir the interest of a few. One of these was John Stewart Bell, a theoretical physicist at CERN, a center for peaceful atomic research near Geneva, Switzerland.

Like Bohm, Bell had also become discontented with quantum theory and felt there must be some alternative. As he later said, "Then in 1952 I saw Bohm's paper. His idea was too complete quantum mechanics by saying there are certain variable in addition to those which everybody knew about. That impressed me very much."

Bell also realized that Bohm's theory implied the existence of nonlocality and wondered if there was any way of experimentally verifying its existence.

The question remained in the back of his mind for years until a sabbatical in 1964 provided him with the freedom to focus his full attention on the matter. Then he quickly came up with an elegant mathematical proof that revealed how such an experiment could be performed.

The only problem was that it required a level of technological precision that was not yet available. To be certain that particles, such as those in the EPR paradox, were not using some normal means of communication, the basic operations of the experiment had to be performed in such an infinitesimally brief instant that there wouldn't even be enough time for a ray of light to cross the distance separating the two particles. This meant that the instruments used in the experiment had to perform all of the necessary operation within a few thousand-millionths of a second.

Enter the Hologram

to be continued.

Different degrees of Order

In the 1960's Bohm began to take a closer look at order. Classical science generally divides things into two categories: those that possess order in the arrangement of their parts and those whose parts are disordered, or random, in arrangement.

Snowflakes, computers, and living things are all ordered. The pattern a handful of spilled coffee beans makes on the floor, the debris left by an explosion, and a series of numbers generated by a roulette wheel are all disordered.

As Bohm delved more deeply into the matter he realized there were also different degrees of order. Some things were much more ordered than other things, and this implied that there was, perhaps, no end to the hierarchies of order that existed in the universe.

From this it occurred to Bohm that maybe things that we perceive as disordered aren't disordered at all. Perhaps their order is of such an "indefinitely high degree" that they only appear to us as random (interestingly, mathematicians are unable to prove randomness, and although some sequences of numbers are categorized as random, these are only educated guesses.)

((BTW this is the same idea I have expressed for things having "degrees of consciousness."))

(And it's exactly one of the ideas I was trying to get across in the "designer of the universe" thread. Thanks Jeannie. )

ENTER THE HOLOGRAM

One of David Bohm's most startling assertions is that the tangible reality of our everyday lives is really a kind of illusion, like a holographic image.

Underlying it is a deeper order of existence, a vast and more primary level of reality that gives birth to all the objects and appearances of our physical world in much the same way that a piece of holographic film gives birth to a hologram. Bohm calls this deeper level of reality the implicate (which means enfolded) order, and he refers to our own level of existence, as the explicate, or unfolded order.

He uses these terms because he sees the manifestation of all forms in the universe as the result of countless enfoldings and unfoldings between these two orders. For example, Bohm believes an electron is not one thing but a totality of ensemble enfolded throughout the whole of space.

When an instrument detects the presence of a single electron it is simply because one aspect of the electron's ensemble has unfolded.

When an electron appears to be moving it is due to a continuous series of such unfoldments and enfoldments.

Put another way, electrons and all other particles are no more substantive or permanent that the form a geyser of water takes as it gushes out of a fountain. They are sustained by a constant influx from the implicate order, and when a particle appears to be destroyed, it is not lost.

It has merely enfolded back into the deeper order from which it sprang. A piece of holographic film and the image it generates are also an example of an implicate and explicate order. The film is an implicate order because the image encoded in its interference patterns is a hidden totality enfolded through the whole. The hologram projected from the film is an explicate order because it represents the unfolded and perceptive version of the image.

The constant and flowing exchange between the two orders explains how particles, such as the electron in the positronium atom, can shapeshift from one kind of particle to another. Such shiftings can be viewed as one particle, say an electron, enfolding back into the implicate order while another, a photon, unfolds and takes its place. It also explains how a quantum can manifest as a particle or a wave.

According to Bohm, both aspects are always enfolded in a quantum's ensemble but the way an observer interacts with the ensemble determines which aspect unfolds and which remains hidden.

As such, the role an observer plays in determining the form a quantum takes may be no more mysterious than the fact that the way a jeweler manipulates a gem determines which of its facets become visible and which do not.

Because the term hologram usually refers to an image that is static and does not convey the dynamic and ever active nature of the incalculable enfoldings and unfoldings that moment by moment create our universe, Bohm prefers to describe the universe not as a hologram, but as a "holomovement."

The existence of a deeper and holographically organized order also explains why reality becomes nonlocal at the subquantum level. As we have seen, when something is organized holographically, all semblance of location breaks down. Saying that every part of a piece of holographic film contains all information possessed by the whole is really just another way of saying that the information is distributed nonlocally. Hence if the universe is organized according to holographic principles, it, too, would be expected to have nonlocal properties.

So is that it?

I wanna here how this novel ends.

It was just getting interesting.

Edited to add correction:

Oops! I posted this before I read the post right before this one!

I guess that was the point of this story.

Very good presentation Jeannie!

Thanks!

I've personally observed a wide variety of interpretations of the phrase "holographic universe" amongst my hippie science-illiterate friends. (Nothing against hippies! And I know there are science literate hippies! I'm speaking of specific people that happen to have all three qualities).

We can't even really define 'universe' without making some assumptions about the nature of time and space, one source gives "All matter and energy, including the earth, the galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space, regarded as a whole".

Holographic - of or related to holograms or holograph, which in turn is "A method of producing a three-dimensional image of an object by recording on a photographic plate or film the pattern of interference formed by a split laser beam and then illuminating the pattern either with a laser or with ordinary light."

What is left out of this definition, if I remember correctly is the fact that information used to render the hologram is dispersed throughout the storage medium, so that a fragment of the medium can reproduce the entire original image at a lower fidelity or from a further limited point of view.

So which qualities of a hologram are assumed to apply when using the phrase holographic universe?

Right away we have two distinct ideas, often confused by careless use of the phrase:

1) The idea of an 3D image viewed from a recording of something.

2) The idea that data is stored is a redundant, dispersed manner.

Two people can both be speaking of a 'holographic universe' and each be referring to completely different concepts. I've witness some pretty idiotic conversations in which it became clear to me that one party meant #1 above, the other party meant #2, and each was so certain that there was only one interpretation that neither 'checked in' and they never understood each other.

Of course, you can combine both ideas...and further silliness results from variations of the above idea.

For example, some who insist we live in a 'holographic universe' in the sense of #2 above conveniently ignore the fact that, in real holograms, information is lost if you lose part of the original recording.

So I have honestly had a scientifically illiterate person tell me, with all sincerity and seriousness, that it was a scientific fact that all of the information in the entire universe was encoded in each and every 'particle' of the universe.

In other words - we could grab an individual electron out of your body and use the information encoded in that electron to not only figure out who killed Kennedy, and exactly where Bigfoot keeps his campsite - we could actually reconstruct the entire universe, the precise position and movement of every star, etc, and the quantum state of every particle of the universe, using the information encoded in any random electron taken from your body.


Now, I'm not interested in arguing against this view. If someone wants to believe that, thats their call. And I'm glad that there are people willing to explore outlandish ideas.

But claiming that this idea has been proven as a hard scientific fact by modern physics is a gross mis-representation of the conclusions of physicists.

I'm sure that Dr. F. won't be making such extreme and definitive claims regarding the information encoded in an individual electron.

Oh, and back to the original question, and my original statement:

I don't really believe that the phrase 'holographic universe' should be limited to 'however Dr. F. uses the phrase'. I assert only that:

Whatever credence Dr. F. lends to the idea of a 'holographic universe', he is only lending credence to the particular application of the phrase which he is using.

Logically, he will not be lending credence to each and every use of the phrase.

But this will not stop some 'holographic universe' enthusiast from pretending that he has.

I'm not expecting him to present anything along those lines either.

But I am interested in the idea of data being stored in various types of fields. It certainly appears to me that this presentation may very well be along these lines. And I imagine that QM is definitely going to enter into this picture as well. After all, that is the entire process through which black hole evaporate. So I imagine this holographic explanation is going have some quantum associations as well.

I've been reading some books that are based on ancient idea of 'magick'. Of coure the very term 'magick' is a very poorly understood term in mordern time. It used to be that magick referred to tranformations and spiritual 'alchemy' (which had nothing to do with 'chemistry').

In fact, the very term 'spiritual' simply meant 'non-physical' and implied a notion of pure throught or pure consciousness.

There we're considered to be many different "levels" of consciousness as Jeanniebean suggests. However, these "levels" of consciousness should not be thought of in terms of a hierarchy in the sense that one level of consciousness is "higher" or "better" than another. It's not that kind of 'level', in fact a better term would be "facet". There are different kinds of consciousnesses and they serve different purposes.

In the ancient "magickal" system there are believed to be 10 different facets of consciousness. They are all categories and described via their functions. Two of them hold particular interest to this notion of a holographic universe. They are called "Malkuth" and "Yesod".

Malkuth simple refers to the conciousness of the physical world. Everything that exists in the physical world exists in the consciousness of "Malkuth".

However, according to this ancient magickal picture of reality, nothing can exist the consciousness of "Malkuth" until it first exists in the consciousness of "Yesod".

"Yesod" is the non-physical (mental) foundation of reality. Everything that is to become manifest in physical form must first be imagined in the pure consciousness of "Yesod". Only then can it be brought into physical manifestation via "Malkuth".

In this magickal "folklore", it is said that everything that exists in "Malkuth" also must necesarily exist in "Yesod". However, the reverse is not true. Many things can exist in "Yesod" that have no yet (or may never) become physically manifest in "Malkuth".

Now I realize that all of this is just magickal folklore. Just the same, when people start talking about a holographic universe where there must be an 'image' of something before it can be 'projected' you've got to admit that it fits in really well with this ancient folklore.

"Yesod" is the consciousness of projection. "Malkuth" is the consciousness of the projected.

And, of course, since this entire process is indeed held to be entirely a manifestation of thought the ancient magicians claimed that anything that can be imagined in "Yesod" can indeed become manifest in "Malkuth". The key is in understanding how to enter into these two different states of consciousness and simply manifesting what you want by pure will and intent.

Thus the magician can manifest things into physical reality via nothing more than pure throught.

I'm not saying that I necessarily believe this, but since I have an ancient lost book that teaches the mental technique to enter into these conscious states I figure I may as well give it a shot. What's to lose?

So it will be interesting to see if the physics of black holes and a scientific-based holographic universe makes any sense in terms of Malkuth and Yesod.

The projector, and the projected.

This is pretty well established. The electric fields generated by the outermost electrons in our hands repel the similar fields of a table, and we perceive the table as 'solid', when its actually mostly empty space. We are taught in elementary school to image the nucleus of atoms as tiny, solid balls surround by electron clouds, but a better (and still inaccurate) model of the nucleus is simply a tighter cloud.

Its well established that our macro-scale intuition of 'how matter and energy really work' does not apply when we really get into it.

So the 'tangible reality of our everyday lives' is indeed an illusion.




This seems like an idea which by its nature, conveniently, could never be dis-proven. A fun thing to think about, certainly.



The 'probability distribution' model is not far removed from this idea.




Yes, many believe that all of matter was originally energy, and that all matter can potentially be returned to energy.




I disagree with the use of the word 'explain'. Providing poetic metaphor for an observed event is not the same as 'explaining' it, to my mind; though it may make the observation more palatable to some people, and 'feel' like an explanation.

I'm also not convinced that we need to 'explain' wave/particle duality in this sense, as much as we need to 'accept' the inappropriateness of applying macro-scale models to quantum events.




So, evidently, this person wishes to apply both #1 and #2 that I listed above...though one does not logically imply the other. Are we getting attached to analogies/metaphors for their own sake? This paragraph reads like a 'development of an idea', but if you really examine it, its a shell game with the label 'holographic'. I mean, he could be right, and both ideas might apply, but I'm left wondering why does this author fails to be more honest about the shell game.



Another potentially dishonest bit of manipulation. We know that there are non-local phenomena. "A implies B, B is true" says nothing about A, and yet some who read this might falsely believe that any observed non-locality validates the holographic model.

Did somebody make the claim that this has been proven?

Very interesting.



Humans have a amazing degree of ability to shape their material reality, and to chose their 'experience' of that reality; and we do a great deal of 'getting in our own way'. If these techniques teach you to better use your very real and practical abilities in these areas, then I would not be surprised if you experience a 'magical' transformation both of your material reality and your experience of that reality.

I like it when 'outlandish sounding' metaphors/models have practical use/consequences.

Yes, quite a few of my acquaintances, especially those I have met through a shared interest in massage, yoga, and/or meditation.

Well, I'm not looking to use Dr. F. to support any of my preconceived notions. In fact, I'm not even an original enthusiast of a holographic universe. I was actually just browsing through the Teaching Company courses just looking for something interesting to watch and I stumbled upon this course and found it interesting.

But now I'm starting to realize that this idea of a holographic universe does indeed fit in perfectly with the idea I mentioned before about the two consciousnesses of Malkuth and Yesod.

I'm also already familiar with black holes and quantum mechanics (although I never heard about this link to holograms before). Coming from Dr. F. I'm intrigued!

Just off the top of my head I can see Malkuth being the unvierse, and Yesod being the quantum field.

So if Dr. F. gives any indication that the holographic nature of black holes arrises from quantum phenomena and properties (which I'm already imagining is highly likely), then this will indeed be an extremely exciting lecture for me to watch.

Of course, it may arise soley from the gravitational aspects too. Which may or may not be linked to distortion in the quantum field.

It doesn't really matter. I'm sure I'll enjoy it either way. I'm not looking to back up a case to argue. I'm just looking to find explanations that might intrige me.

I hope neither you nor JB takes anything I say in this topic personally - I hope its clear that my statements are partially motivated by my frustration with the silliness and close-mindedness of some 'holographic universe' enthusiasts which I have met, in real life.

Someday I might order those videos, myself.

This is what I have been attempting to convey. That information is stored. And it is stored in just about everything, and everything has its own "field."

You have your own field. It is called a "unified field" and it surrounds your physical body. It has its own "mind" and its own space-time system that is independent of the space-time system in this that we call our reality. This we call our reality (the physical universe) is the "outer unfoldment" or "explicate order" that I see David Bohm is talking about.

These are just my ideas. Not that I have any supporting evidence or proof.

I don't think the idea of holographic structure to this universe is "silly" or "closed minded" at all. Just because you hear some non-scientific ideas about it. To call the idea "silly" sounds a bit closed minded to me since respected scientists and physicists are considering it.

Yes, “falsifiability” is an important factor in the philosophy of science.

But we can’t lose sight of the fact that falsifiability is only a logical construct, and as such, it is only applicable within that context.

If something is observed, then logic itself is irrelevant.

And I don’t see any reason why it cannot be observed. The PEAR experiments seem to point in that direction.

So I don’t see the “convenience” of the premise as really being a detriment. It’s simply a “What if?” And the whole purpose of such a “What if?” is convenience. That’s what philosophy, combined with Occam’s Razor, is all about.

I’m just coming to realize that what you call “the unified field” is what I call “the mind”. I guess the difference between us is that I consider the mind to be attached to/dependent on “I”, not “body” – and “the spacetime system” (including body) to be the projection projected by the mind.

But in any case, it’s always good to gain more understanding of other’s views, as I have of yours.

Thank you.