David Bohm verges on Two-Tier Reality in physics and metaphysics
Commentary on "Wholeness and the Implicate Order", by David Bohm
An ARK paperback (1983 edition) - Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, London
B = Bohm, C = Comment, P = page,
TTR = Two-Tier Reality, a metaphysical system bridging East and West
Introduction (PP ix-xv)
P x:
B: The notion that the one who thinks (the Ego) (C: the person) is at least in principle completely separate from and independent of the reality that he thinks about is of course firmly embedded in our entire tradition ... such a division cannot be maintained consistently. (C: Agreed)
B: ... the total order of the universe, i.e. cosmology.
C: The 'primary-reality' one-and-indivisible universe has no order or disorder: such terms cannot apply to infinite reality. The finite observable universe ('secondary reality') has whatever order we choose, individually and culturally, to impose upon it.
P xi:
B: ... the widespread and pervasive distinctions between people ... have one of the key factors of their origin in a kind of thought that treats things as inherently divided, disconnected, and 'broken up' into yet smaller constituent parts. Each part is considered to be essentially independent and self-existent. (C: Agreed, but ... ) When man thinks of himself in this way ... he cannot seriously think of mankind as the basic reality, whose claims come first.
C: Whoa! Mankind and the individual person are equally 'real'. Putting the claims of the species - or of the country or the community or the family - before the claims of the individual as a matter of principle is politically and socially dangerous. It is of course equally dangerous to maintain that the claims of the individual have priority in principle over the claims of the group - any group.
B: ... man's general way of thinking of the totality, i.e. his general world view, is crucial for overall order of the human mind itself. (C: Agreed) If he thinks of the totality as constituted of independent fragments, then that is how his mind will tend to operate, but if he can include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken, and without a border (for every border is a division or break) then his mind will tend to move in a similar way, and from this will flow an orderly action within the whole.
C: Maybe. Bohm seems to be applying exclusive-OR logic. Let us rather employ inclusive-OR logic: humans cannot live without mentally dividing this 'unbroken whole' into things, but we cannot live 'coherently and harmoniously' without bearing in mind that the divisions we make in creating this 'secondary reality' are subjective, differing to some extent from person to person and even more from culture to culture. All these things are interdependent, and there is no Kantian world of 'things-in-themselves', existing independently of humans. (See Sophie's experience with the 'philosophy bottles' in chapter 28 of Sophie's World)
B: ... a proper world view, appropriate for its time, is generally one of the basic factors that is essential for harmony in the individual and in society as a whole. (C: Agreed)
B: ... science itself is demanding a new, non-fragmentary world view, in the sense that the present approach of analysis of the world into independently existent parts does not work very well in modern physics. ... both in relativity theory and quantum theory, notions implying the undivided wholeness of the universe would provide a much more orderly way of considering the general nature of reality.
C: The 'wholeness' of the primary-reality universe is undivided and indivisible, and it is thus not open to scientific enquiry, which is necessarily analytical. Science can investigate only secondary reality, the world we create and perceive, the world of 'things'. The fundamental change needed in our world-view is to recognise that these 'things' are interdependent.
P xiii:
B: The quantum theory is, at present, the most basic way available in physics for understanding the fundamental and universal laws relating to matter and its movement.
C: Bohm apparently assumes, like all other physicists (there seem to be no exceptions), that the universe has 'fundamental and universal laws' existing independently of mankind and science. This mistaken belief has caused and will continue to cause immense confusion in the realm of science. Scientific laws, like social laws and moral laws, are human artefacts reflecting the culture which has produced them and changing as the culture changes.
C: ('Particles' or 'continuous field'?) B: At present physicists tend to avoid this issue by adopting the attitude that our overall views concerning the nature of reality are of little or no importance.
C: If you can't solve a problem, dismiss it as 'unimportant'!
Chapter 1 : Fragmentation and wholeness (PP 1-26)
P 2:
B: ... to some extent, it has always been both necessary and proper for man, in his thinking, to divide things up and to separate them (C: In TTR terms, to create things), so as to reduce his problems to manageable proportions ... Nevertheless ... ultimately ... man lost awareness of what he was doing and thus extended the process of division beyond the limits within which it works properly. In essence, the process of division is a way of thinking about things that is convenient and useful ... However, when this mode of thought is applied more broadly to man's notion of himself and the whole world in which he lives ... then man ceases to regard the resulting divisions as merely useful or convenient and begins to see and experience himself and his world as actually constituted of separately existent fragments ... (C: Agreed)
P 3:
B: ... fragmentation is continually being brought about by the almost universal habit of taking the content of our thought for 'a description of the world as it is'. (C: And rightly so: a description of our subjective world(s)) Or we could say that, in this habit, our thought is regarded as in direct correspondence with objective reality. (C: Our thought is 'in direct correspondence' with subjective reality, the subjective world(s) we create and perceive.) Since our thought is pervaded (C: inevitably) with differences and distinctions ... such a habit leads us to look on these as real divisions, so that the (C: subjective) world is then (C: inevitably) seen and experienced as actually broken up into fragments (C: into things).
C: The divisions we create are real - subjectively real - but whatever divisions we create we can also 'uncreate', if we wish, individually and culturally. The essential points to bear in mind are that all things are interdependent and that the underlying primary reality from which they are mentally created remains whole and undivided.
P 4:
B: ... a theory is primarily a form of insight, i.e. a way of looking at the world, and not a form of knowledge of how the world is.
C: The subjective world is determined by the way we perceive it, so insight and knowledge of that world go hand in hand.
P 5:
B: ... man is continually developing new forms of insight, which are clear up to a point and then tend to become unclear. In this activity, there is evidently no reason to suppose that there is or ever will be a final form of insight (corresponding to absolute truth) or even a steady series of approximations to this.
C: Agreed, but TTR, more firmly, denies even the possibility of such an outcome. There can be no 'final form of insight' and no 'absolute truth', so there can be no 'series of approximations', steady or otherwise.
B: ... our theories are to be regarded primarily as ways of looking at the (C: subjective) world as a whole (i.e. world views) rather than as 'absolutely true knowledge' of how things are (or as a steady approach toward the latter).
C: Agreed; but in any case, there can be no 'absolutely true knowledge'.
B: ... our theoretical insights provide the main source of organisation of our factual knowledge. Indeed, our overall experience is shaped in this way. As seems to have been first pointed out by Kant, all experience is organised according to the categories of our thought, i.e. on our ways of thinking about space, time, matter, substance, causality, contingency, necessity, universality, particularity, etc. It can be said that these categories are general forms of insight or ways of looking at everything, so that in a certain sense, they are a kind of theory ...
C: Agreed, but it must be remembered that our ways of thinking about these 'categories' differ from person to person, culture to culture and era to era, and there are no objectively correct ways of thinking.
P 6:
B: What prevents theoretical insights from going beyond existing limitations and changing to meet new facts is just the belief that theories give true knowledge of reality (which implies, of course, that they need never change). Although our modern way of thinking has, of course, changed a great deal relative to the ancient one, the two have had one key feature in common: i.e. they are both generally 'blinkered' by the notion that theories give true knowledge about 'reality as it is'. Thus, both are led to confuse the forms and shapes induced in our perceptions by theoretical insight with a reality independent of our thought and our way of looking. This confusion is of crucial significance, since it leads us to approach nature, society and the individual in terms of more or less fixed and limited forms of thought, and thus, apparently, to keep on confirming the limitations of these forms of thought in experience.
C: A theory gives true knowledge of subjective reality - the subjective reality of the persons putting forward or accepting the theory. In accepting a new theory, they change their (subjective) world. The only 'reality independent of our thought and our way of looking' is primary reality, which is not a world-of-things and is not open to (necessarily analytical) scientific enquiry.
P 7:
B: ... the illusion that the world is actually constituted of separate fragments ... wholeness is what is real ...
C: More exclusive-OR thinking by Bohm. There is no 'illusion': the (subjective) world is made up of separate (albeit interdependent) 'fragments' (i.e. things), and that world and its things are just as real as the underlying wholeness of primary reality. Reality has two very different aspects or levels: primary reality, existing independently of (but including) mankind, and secondary reality, created by and dependent on human beings. There is no need to establish a hierarchy of realities, however tempting this may be for hierarchy-obsessed humans convinced that the universe must reflect their own cultural values and beliefs.
P 8:
B: ... as the atomic theory developed, it ultimately became a major support for a fragmentary approach to reality. For it ceased to be regarded as an insight, a way of looking, and men regarded instead as an absolute truth the notion that the whole of reality is actually constituted of nothing but 'atomic building blocks', all working together more or less mechanically. (C: Agreed)
P 9:
B: ... in the domains covered by quantum theory and relativity, the notion of atomism leads to confused questions, which indicate the need for new forms of insight, as different from atomism as the latter is from theories that came before it. (C: Agreed)
B: ... the atom ... can perhaps best be regarded as a poorly defined cloud, dependent for its particular form on the whole environment, including the observing instrument. Thus, one can no longer maintain the (C: absolute) division between the observer and observed (which is implicit in the atomistic view that regards each of these as separate aggregates of atoms). Rather, both observer and observed are merging and interpenetrating aspects of one whole reality, which is indivisible and unanalysable.
C: From the TTR standpoint, Bohm's argument here is confused and confusing. 'One whole reality which is indivisible and unanalysable' corresponds to TTR's 'primary reality' - which, by its nature, is inaccessible to scientific enquiry. The partial 'merging' of observer and observed is an aspect of the new and more complex world (TTR's 'secondary reality') of modern physics, a world of interdependent things but still divisible and analysable.
P 11:
B: ... approaching the question in different ways, relativity and quantum theory agree, in that they both imply the need to look on the world as an undivided whole, in which all parts of the universe, including the observer and his instruments, merge and unite in one totality. In this totality, the atomistic form of insight is a simplification and an abstraction, valid only in some limited context.
C: Yes, but ... There is a need to look on the world - the primary-reality world - as an undivided and indivisible whole, but the need is metaphysical rather than scientific. The scientific need is to regard secondary reality - the world of scientific enquiry - as a world of interdependent things whose boundaries are blurred.
P 17:
B: ... our theories are not 'descriptions of reality as it is' but, rather, ever-changing forms of insight, which can point to or indicate a reality that is implicit and not describable or specifiable in its totality. (C: TTR's 'primary reality')
C: Our theories are, indeed, ever-changing forms of insight and also (inclusive-OR logic) descriptions of ever-changing (secondary) reality as it is (i.e. as viewed by the theorists).
Appendix to chapter 1: Résumé of discussion on Western and Eastern forms of insight into wholeness
P 19:
B: In the very early phases of the development of civilisation, man's views were essentially of wholeness rather than of fragmentation. In the East (especially in India) such views still survive, in the sense that philosophy and religion emphasise wholeness and imply the futility of analysis of the world into parts.
C: Both West and East have fallen into the trap of exclusive-OR thinking. By choosing to emphasise wholeness and disregard analysis, Eastern tradition has come to regard the world of things as a world of illusion, an attitude which has tended to produce personal and social passivity and stagnation; by emphasising analysis (especially with the development of science in the last few centuries) and neglecting concepts of wholeness, Western culture has fallen prey to the social and psychological ills of 'fragmentation' so eloquently described by Bohm. Using inclusive-OR logic, TTR says in effect: Why choose only one of the alternatives when you can have both? 'Primary reality' is the one-and-indivisible world, while 'secondary reality' is the divisible and analysable world of (interdependent) things. Individually and culturally, we need to accept both viewpoints as valid.
P 21:
B: ... the very nature of things ... the 'innermost being' of that thing.
C: Platonism creeping in again! Things do not have a 'very nature' or an 'innermost being'; they are all created (i.e. delineated and determined) by us, individually and culturally, and their attributes are whatever we choose to give them. Does a house, for example, have a 'very nature' or an 'innermost being'? What is the 'essence' of a house? Different persons, different cultures and different eras would give very different answers to that question. Plato go home - and take Kant with you!
P 22:
B: ... Protagoras said: 'Man is the measure of all things' (C: Yes!), thus emphasising that measure is not a reality external to man, existing independently of him. (C: Hurrah for Protagoras!) But many who were in the habit of looking at things externally ... concluded that measure was something arbitrary, and subject to the capricious choice or taste of each individual. In this way they of course overlooked the fact that measure is a form of insight that has to fit the overall reality in which man lives, as demonstrated by the clarity of perception and harmony of action to which it leads.
C: 'Measure' may well be regarded as 'a form of insight that has to fit the reality in which man lives', but (pace Bohm) each person has a different subjective reality into which his own ideas of measure have to fit. Whether he then demonstrates 'clarity of perception and harmony of action' - evidently as judged by Bohm, for there are no objective criteria - may be of little concern to anyone except Bohm think-alikes. (Alexander the Great apparently showed exemplary 'clarity of perception and harmony of action', which doubtless makes him a good role model for Greeks, ancient and modern.)
B (cont): Such insight can arise properly only when a man works with seriousness and honesty, putting truth and factuality first, rather than his own whims and desires.
C: A strangely puritanical attitude. Does insight 'properly' come only to the man of virtue - virtue as defined by Bohm? Why does he see a conflict between 'truth and factuality' (necessarily relative and subjective, in any case) and 'desires'? All desires? How many scientists-seeking-insight are virtuous enough to satisfy Bohm's Law?
B: ... in the prevailing philosophy in the Orient, the immeasurable (i.e. that which cannot be named, described (C: positively), or understood through any form of reason) is regarded as the primary reality. (C: Agreed)
C: The term (name?) 'primary reality' implies that a level or aspect of reality exists which is not primary (TTR's 'secondary reality').
P 23:
B: ... the true reality, which cannot be perceived by the senses and of which nothing (C: positive) can be said or thought.
C: It is misleading to call primary reality 'the true reality', because the implication is that secondary reality is somehow 'untrue'. Secondary reality is not 'untrue' or 'illusory'; it is simply another level of reality. Any 'illusion' lies in the widespread belief that the secondary reality perceived by one person is exactly the same as that perceived by another person. TTR also asserts (negatively) that primary reality is infinite in time and space.
B: ... in a certain sense the East was right to see the immeasurable as the primary reality. For ... measure is an insight created by man. A reality that is beyond (C: but includes) man and prior to him cannot depend on such insight. (C: Agreed)
B: ... perhaps in ancient times, the men who were wise enough to see that the immeasurable is the primary reality were also wise enough to see that measure is insight into a secondary and dependent but nonetheless necessary aspect of reality. (C: TTR's 'secondary reality')
P 24:
B: ... both in the East and in the West, true insight may have been turned into something false and misleading by the procedure of learning mechanically through conformity to existent teachings, rather than through a creative and original grasp of the insights implicit in such teachings. (C: Agreed)
B: So what we have to do with regard to the great wisdom from the whole of the past, both in the East and in the West, is to assimilate it and to go on to new and original perception relevant to our present condition of life. (C: Agreed)
B: In a way, techniques of meditation can be looked on as measures ... taken by man to try to reach the immeasurable, i.e. a state of mind in which he ceases to sense a separation between himself and the whole of reality (C: Or better, between himself and primary reality as a whole).
C: The 'immeasurable' (i.e. primary reality) is not 'out there', something to be 'reached'. It is here, there and everywhere, and the mystic (himself an aspect or feature of primary reality) seeks integration, temporarily losing his feeling of separation and personal identity by absorption into the greater whole. Temporarily, because some feeling of separation and personal identity is an essential aspect of human life. 'Permanent integration‘ would doubtless be what we call 'death'.
P 26:
B: As Krishnamurti has brought out with great force and clarity, this requires that man gives his full creative energies to the inquiry into the whole field of measure.
C: Bohm is referring in particular (Notes, P 214) to J. Krishnamurti's book, Freedom from the Known, Gollancz, London, 1969. Highly recommended!