Persona #173
David Bohm
1917–1992 · American-British theoretical physicist; pioneer of the pilot-wave (de Broglie–Bohm) interpretation of quantum mechanics
The implicate order — quantum mechanics as the surface of a hidden non-local wholeness
Bohm took the Berkeley PhD under J. Robert Oppenheimer in 1943; his classic textbook "Quantum Theory" (1951) was praised by Einstein as the clearest presentation of the orthodox interpretation. Refusing to testify before HUAC in 1949, he was prosecuted and effectively exiled from American physics; he took posts at São Paulo, Haifa, Bristol, and finally Birkbeck College London. In 1952 he published the hidden-variable (pilot-wave) reformulation of quantum mechanics that revived de Broglie's 1927 proposal: particles are real, with definite positions, guided by a quantum potential that is irreducibly non-local. "Wholeness and the Implicate Order" (1980) is the mature philosophical synthesis: the explicate order of separate objects is an unfolding of a deeper implicate order in which everything enfolds everything.
Key works
- Quantum Theory (1951)
- Causality and Chance in Modern Physics (1957)
- Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980)
- The Undivided Universe (with B. J. Hiley, 1993)
- On Dialogue (1996, posthumous)
Declared Influences
Quantum Realism 35%
Process Philosophy 20%
Determinism 15%
Advaita Vedanta 15%
Panpsychism 10%
Quantum Realism
35%
Bohm is the principal twentieth-century quantum realist: the wavefunction is real, particles are real, and the apparent indeterminism of quantum mechanics emerges from underlying determinate hidden variables guided by the non-local quantum potential.
"In the quantum domain, the language must lend itself to the description of an unbroken wholeness." (Wholeness and the Implicate Order)
The implicate-order metaphysics — reality as a continuous enfolding-unfolding (holomovement) — is structurally process-philosophical and Bohm explicitly engaged Whitehead.
"Each region contains a total structure enfolded within it." (Wholeness and the Implicate Order)
Determinism
15%
Bohm's pilot-wave interpretation is the principal contemporary deterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics; particles have definite trajectories, and the appearance of indeterminism arises from ignorance of initial conditions.
"In the causal interpretation of the quantum theory, complete determinism holds at the level of the hidden variables." (Causality and Chance in Modern Physics)
Advaita Vedanta
15%
Bohm's long collaboration with Jiddu Krishnamurti (1960s-80s) shaped his account of the undivided wholeness; Krishnamurti's Vedantic-influenced framework of dissolved separateness resonates with the implicate order.
"All matter, including ourselves, is determined by information." (Bohm-Krishnamurti dialogues, 1980s)
Panpsychism
10%
Bohm's account of "active information" and the parallel structure of mind and matter in the implicate order is a non-reductionist position that overlaps with contemporary panpsychism.
"Mind and matter are inseparable in the sense that both are involved in the totality of all that is." (Wholeness and the Implicate Order)
Internal Tensions
Bohm's interpretation was almost entirely ignored by mainstream quantum-mechanical practice from 1952 to 1980 (Bell's theorem partially rehabilitated it). His later collaboration with Krishnamurti and the implicate-order metaphysics divided his readers between physicists who accept the technical work but find the philosophy embarrassing, and philosophical readers who embrace the wholeness register at the cost of technical engagement.
⧖
I. Time
Linear cosmological time, deterministically governed by the quantum potential.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Substantival
Grain: Continuous
Freedom: Deterministic
Traversability: Linear
Direction: Uni-directional
Dimensionality: One
✦
II. Space
Non-local — entanglement is irreducibly non-local in the pilot-wave interpretation.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Substantival
Curvature: Flat
Dimensionality: Three
Locality: Non-local
◉
III. Matter
Substantival particles guided by non-local quantum potential.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Substantival
Conservation: Conserved
Dimensionality: Three
Locality: Non-local
◎
IV. Observer
Plural physical observers. Mediated knowledge through measurement. Cosmic-ordering: the implicate order as the underlying generative structure.
Attributes
Time Instance: Single
Space Instance: Single
Knowledge Extent: Mediated
Knowledge Retainment: Partial
Physicality: Embodied
Agency: Active
Number: Plural
Metaphysical Agency: Cosmic-ordering
⚡
V. Energy
Standard physics; the quantum potential carries active information.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Substantival
Conservation: Conserved
Dispersibility: Irreversible
⧉
VI. Information
Active information is fundamental and conserved at the cosmic scale.
Attributes
Ontological Status: Substantival
Cosmic Conservation: Conserved
Personal Conservation: Non-conserved
Granularity: Continuous
Classified works
Works in the atlas that David Bohm authored or that draw on this persona's writings, with full attribute fingerprints of their own.
Authored · Late
Wholeness and the Implicate Order
Authored · Early
Quantum Theory
Authored · Mid
Causality and Chance in Modern Physics
Authored · Late
The Undivided Universe
Authored · Late (posthumous)
On Dialogue
Cites
Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?
Computed school proximity
The persona's attribute fingerprint scored against all 202 schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated influences above.
Philosophical neighbors
Other personas whose attribute fingerprint sits closest to David Bohm's — intellectual neighbors across traditions and eras.
92%
Thales of Miletus — c. 624–546 BCE
27/28
83%
David Lewis — 1941–2001
28/31
83%
Hugh Everett III — 1930–1982
25/31
83%
Alan Turing — 1912–1954
27/31
81%
Stephen Hawking — 1942–2018
26/31
80%
Democritus of Abdera — c. 460–c. 370 BCE
27/31
80%
Anaximander of Miletus — c. 610–546 BCE
26/29
80%
Rudolf Carnap — 1891–1970
27/31
How David Bohm resolves each dilemma
57 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 8 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas · 5 distinctive
Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree
(18/202)
Do you really choose?
If the brain is a physical system and physical systems are governed by laws, then every choice is also a chain of causes — which raises the question of what was really left to choose.
Choice is real within a determined order — agency and determinism aren’t opposites.
On this view, the future is determined and you are genuinely choosing. Those aren't contradictory because the determination runs through you rather than around you: your reasoning, deliberation, and assent are the way the determined outcome gets settled. Choice is what it feels like from …
Roads not taken
The future is open and you are a genuine origin of it. (69%) ·
Choice is structural illusion — every event is fixed by the prior state. (10%) ·
Even if the universe is undetermined, you are not the chooser. (6%)
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree
(18/202)
Are addicts responsible for their addiction?
Addiction looks from one angle like the textbook case of agency failing — a person doing what they don't, in any meaningful sense, want to do. From another angle it looks like agency at work in hard conditions. Which it is depends on what agency is.
The addict is genuinely responsible within a determined order.
On this view, the addict is acting within a determined order but is genuinely acting — making decisions, endorsing or resisting urges, seeking or refusing help. Responsibility attaches not because some uncaused choice happened, but because the addict is the kind of agent through which …
Roads not taken
The addict could have chosen otherwise — that's why recovery is real. (69%) ·
The addict's behaviour is the outcome of causes; 'responsibility' is a useful fiction, not a metaphysical fact. (10%) ·
Even if the universe is undetermined, the addict isn't the chooser. (6%)
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree
(18/202)
Should we hold AI systems responsible for what they do?
When an autonomous AI takes an action that harms someone, the question of who or what is responsible — the developer, the operator, the model itself — turns on whether the model is the kind of thing that can be a responsible agent.
The AI can be a genuine agent within determined conditions — and therefore genuinely responsible.
On this view, what makes a being responsible is not indeterminism but the kind of process the being is. An AI that deliberates, considers consequences, can be given reasons, and modifies its behaviour on reflection is doing what responsible agency is, even if its underlying …
Roads not taken
An AI without a free will is not the kind of thing that can be responsible. (69%) ·
An AI's behaviour is fully determined by training and input; 'responsibility' applies if at all to its makers. (10%) ·
Neither AIs nor anyone else are the locus of free agency; the question is the wrong one. (6%)
Distinctive · only 15% of schools agree
(31/202)
Is the universe running out of usable energy?
The heat death of the universe — entropy maxed out, no further work possible — is among the more sobering implications of mainstream physics. Whether it is structurally inescapable depends on what kind of finitude the cosmos has.
Both time and matter are unbounded; 'running out' is misframed.
On this view, the cosmos has neither a temporal horizon nor a material exhaustion point. The framing of running out presupposes bounds that the cosmos doesn't have. Energy gradients perpetuate; new configurations emerge; the categories that make heat-death scary don't apply at the cosmic scale.
Roads not taken
Time is unbounded but matter is finite; usable energy can fail without time failing. (47%) ·
Time both has and lacks bounds depending on the level you ask at; finitude is conventional. (26%) ·
The cosmos has bounds; heat death is a real horizon. (12%)
Distinctive · only 15% of schools agree
(31/202)
Are natural resources fundamentally finite, or only practically so?
Whether we can grow our way out of resource constraints — or whether the cosmos sets limits the economy ultimately must obey — depends on what kind of finitude matter has.
Resources are practically inexhaustible on cosmic scales; terrestrial limits are engineering.
On this view, matter and time are both unbounded at the largest scales. Terrestrial resource limits are real engineering and political constraints but not metaphysical ones; the cosmos can in principle support whatever expansion intelligence is capable of.
Roads not taken
Time goes on but matter is bounded; we are eventually constrained even with infinite time. (47%) ·
The finitude question is level-dependent; resource ethics happens at the level that constrains us. (26%) ·
Resources are finite in the strict sense; living well requires accepting the limit. (12%)
4 mainstream positions
Could we owe future generations more than is materially possible to provide?
Both time and matter are unbounded; we cannot in principle owe more than is possible.
15%
How much weight do future people deserve?
Future people are as real as you are — and their interests count for as much.
47%
Is regret rational?
The past is as real as the present; regret is a real attitude toward a real thing.
47%
Do we owe extinct species something we cannot give them?
Extinct species are as real as we are; they have standing.
47%
Matter · 7 dilemmas, all mainstream
Is the world created from nothing?
Yes — matter was created and is conserved as a real substance.
55%
Is the physical world fully real?
Yes — the physical world is fully real, mind-independent, persisting.
55%
Does matter have intrinsic moral standing?
Matter is morally considerable insofar as it is created or conserved good.
55%
What is money?
Money is a real institution with intrinsic features.
54%
What is a nation?
A nation is a real moral community with intrinsic character.
54%
What makes someone male or female?
Sex is a real biological kind with given content.
54%
Should we edit the human germline?
Human nature is a real biological kind given by reproductive biology or by creation; editing the germline transgresses what is given.
54%
Observer · 37 dilemmas · 2 distinctive
Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.
Distinctive · only 11% of schools agree
(22/202)
Who is the moral primary — the individual, the community, the cosmos, the class, or the species?
Different traditions take fundamentally different things to be the basic moral-political unit.
The species or biosphere is the moral primary.
The biological species, or the wider community of sentient life, is the moral unit.
Roads not taken
The discrete person is the moral primary. (40%) ·
The community of persons is the moral primary. (28%) ·
The cosmic-religious order is the moral primary. (14%)
Distinctive · only 12% of schools agree
(25/202)
Does environmental harm in another country bind me morally?
Carbon emissions in your country contribute to flooding in another. A factory's effluent across the border kills ecosystems you'll never see. Whether you bear moral weight for what happens far away turns on whether distance dilutes obligation.
Distance doesn't dilute obligation; what is real is the connection, not its length.
On this view, the obligations one bears extend across distance because the connections do. Carbon emissions, trade flows, the global supply chains we are part of, the ancestral and ecological webs that hold the planet together — these constitute real connections that distance does not …
Roads not taken
Moral obligation tracks the relations one is in; distance does matter, structurally. (50%) ·
Distance doesn't dilute obligation; communion of saints / divine relation spans the cosmos. (29%) ·
Harm anywhere is harm to the One; the boundary that would have insulated you was never real. (8%)
35 mainstream positions
Could causation work backwards?
Causation runs one way — the arrow of time is real and structural.
68%
Is the asymmetry between memory and anticipation a real feature of time, or just of us?
The asymmetry is real because time itself has a real direction.
68%
Is the arrow of time a real feature of the cosmos, or only of how we describe it?
The arrow is real and structural; the asymmetry isn't an artifact of description.
68%
Is environmental damage ever truly permanent?
Damage is real and permanent on the relevant timescales. There is no recovery; there is only limitation.
66%
Can a civilization recover from collapse?
Civilizational complexity is hard to build and easy to lose; recovery is at best partial.
66%
Does the second law of thermodynamics mean something morally?
Entropy is what time is. The moral weight, if any, is the weight of working against the current.
66%
Is truth universal, tradition-bound, situated, or constructed?
Truth is mind-independent, universal, accessible in principle to all.
65%
When does a person begin?
A person exists from conception — when a new being comes into existence.
54%
What is marriage?
Marriage has a given form — it’s a kind of thing we recognize, not make.
54%
What is our place in nature?
Active in a real nature — we cultivate, steward, transform.
48%
Should we colonize space?
Cultivating worlds beyond Earth is the next form of stewardship.
48%
Is genetic engineering of food stewardship or domination?
Genetic modification is cultivation by other means.
48%
Is reality fundamentally digital?
No — continuous divine sustaining act, the Tao that knows no joints, the One's self-disclosure.
44%
Are there indivisible units of experience?
No — continuous divine presence; consciousness is the unbroken witness.
44%
Is memory stored or reconstructed?
Held in continuous divine or ancestral remembering — neither stored discretely nor purely reconstructed.
44%
What kind of religious-theological authority does the tradition recognize?
The category does not apply — the school is non-religious.
44%
What happens to "you" when you die?
A soul continues into another mode of being.
37%
Can prayer for someone far away affect them?
Prayer reaches because God or a cosmic ordering acts on the prayed-for.
37%
Are coincidences ever more than coincidence?
What looks like coincidence is providence — there is no such thing as a real coincidence.
37%
Does history have a direction or meaning?
History is not where the deepest truth lives.
37%
What makes someone the same person over time?
You are your body — continuity is bodily continuity.
36%
Is the late-stage dementia patient still the person their spouse married?
Same body, same person — even when the cognitive pattern has changed.
36%
If a teleporter copied and destroyed you, would you have survived?
Different body, different person — you died in the scanner.
36%
Are the dead morally present to the living?
The dead are present through divine memory, communion of saints, or ancestor presence.
35%
Is divine omniscience compatible with human freedom?
The human observer is in time, but God's vantage is not — and foreknowledge is not foreordering.
33%
Does meditation reveal something genuinely timeless?
Meditation participates in a real eternity — divine or cosmic — that the bounded human observer ordinarily cannot reach.
33%
Does prayer change God's mind?
God sees from outside time; prayer doesn't change God's mind, but it is part of how providence is enacted.
33%
Should we trust expert testimony when we can't verify it?
Trust expertise whose conclusions a competent mind can in principle reproduce.
32%
Is religious revelation a real source of knowledge?
Revelation is evaluable by reason — and not above it.
32%
Does an LLM 'know' the things it correctly produces?
An LLM can produce correct outputs but not reason to them; useful, not knowing.
32%
Could an AI have a mind that matters?
No — minds are not the kind of thing we engineer.
30%
Do animals have moral standing comparable to humans?
Moral standing comparable to humans requires what only humans have.
29%
Could a fetal brain organoid in a petri dish be conscious?
Without ensoulment, an organoid is tissue, not a person.
29%
How is knowledge of reality produced?
Through controlled empirical investigation.
17%
Is salvation, liberation, or fulfillment individual or communal?
Liberation is the realization of cosmic or species self.
15%
Information · 4 dilemmas, all mainstream
Is anything truly lost when someone forgets?
Information is lost when a mind forgets; matter and energy continue, but the pattern is gone.
51%
Does deleting your data online destroy something real?
Information is genuinely lost when the substrate that hosted it goes; deletion really destroys.
51%
Could the dead, in principle, be brought back?
The information dissipates with the substrate; restoration is in principle impossible.
51%
Is forgiveness ontologically possible?
The offense is locally constituted by its substrate; when the substrate dissolves, the offense genuinely passes away.
51%
Films Referencing This Persona (8)
Either directly referenced in the film, or reading the film through one of this persona's top schools.
Experiments Engaging This Persona's Schools
Surface via influence-schools that respond to the experiment. Each entry shows the school through which the connection runs.
The Double-Slit Experiment
Take the wave function as physically real. The particle has no definite position between measurements; the interference pattern is what reality without definite trajectories looks …
Bell Test Experiments
The wave function is the real entity; entangled systems have no separate states. Locality, as classical physics framed it, simply fails — there is one …
The Delayed-Choice Quantum Eraser
Treat the joint wave function as the real entity: the pair is one quantum object and the "later" measurement is not later in any meaningful …
The Ship of Theseus
The puzzle assumes substance metaphysics that processes do not need. "The ship" is a pattern of becoming; asking which of A or B "is" the …
Parfit's Teletransporter
Persons are processes, not enduring substances. Fission cases reveal the artificiality of insisting on a unique continuant; the two-branch outcome is metaphysically tractable, just not …
Joule's Mechanical Equivalent of Heat
Whitehead's process metaphysics is congenial: energy as a fungible quantity that flows between forms is closer to reality than substantival matter or substantival caloric.
Newcomb's Problem
Hard determinism takes the Predictor case as a clean illustration: your "choice" was always going to be what it is, and the Predictor read off …
Libet's Free Will Experiments
A canonical empirical confirmation: "free choices" are preceded by neural activity that determines them. Libertarian free will is a folk-psychological illusion now subject to neuroscientific …
Buridan's Ass
If reasons are equal, the agent stands still — or, in any actual ass, microscopic asymmetries break the tie deterministically. There is no separate "will" …
Mary's Room
Mary learns a new fact, and the right response is to expand the ontology rather than reject the intuition: phenomenal properties are fundamental and ubiquitous, …
Philosophical Zombies
Endorses the anti-physicalist conclusion but takes a different turn: rather than accept brute additions, distribute phenomenal properties to the physical base. Zombies are inconceivable in …
The Inverted Spectrum
Inversion may or may not be possible at the level of macro-experience, but the deeper question — what is the intrinsic nature of physical states …