Work #1203 · Late period
Wholeness and the Implicate Order
David Bohm's 1980 holistic philosophy of physics — the implicate order as alternative to fragmentary mechanism
David Bohm
· 1980
· English
· Philosophy of physics / Synthetic essays
Tradition: Foundations of quantum mechanics / Holism
Bohm's 1980 holistic philosophy of physics — the implicate order as alternative to fragmentary mechanism
Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980) is David Bohm's major philosophical-physical synthesis. Drawing on his work in the foundations of quantum mechanics — particularly his 1952 hidden-variable interpretation — Bohm develops the doctrine of the "implicate order": underlying the explicate-order of separated objects-and-events is an enfolded-implicate order where what appears as fragmentary is in fact aspects of an undivided whole. Holistic philosophy of physics with broader philosophical-metaphysical implications.
Author
Editions cited
- Wholeness and the Implicate Order (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980; later editions Routledge)
School Embodiments
Major contemporary philosophy-of-physics text — holistic alternative to fragmentary-mechanist analytic-metaphysics.
"Reality is undivided wholeness; what appears as separateness is the disguise of underlying wholeness." (Wholeness and the Implicate Order)
Major contemporary monist statement — the implicate order as proper-undivided foundation of all phenomena.
"The implicate order is the deepest reality; the explicate order of fragmented appearances is derivative." (Wholeness and the Implicate Order)
Strong process-philosophical resonances — reality as unfolding-enfolding rather than static-substantial.
"Reality is movement, undivided flowing; 'things' are temporary stabilities in this movement." (Wholeness and the Implicate Order)
Mysticism
10%
Engagement with religious-mystical traditions — particularly through Bohm's late dialogues with Krishnamurti.
"The wholeness that the religious-mystical traditions affirm is the wholeness that the proper-physical analysis discovers." (Wholeness and the Implicate Order)
Realism
15%
Realist about the implicate order — it is what really is, not a mere theoretical-mathematical construct.
"The implicate order is real; the explicate order is also real but derivative — both are aspects of the one undivided wholeness." (Wholeness and the Implicate Order)
Systems-theoretical and holistic frameworks share family resemblances with Bohm's implicate-order doctrine.
"The systems-theoretical and holistic-philosophical frameworks of the twentieth century converge on the recognition of wholeness." (Wholeness and the Implicate Order)
Internal Tensions
Bohm's holistic philosophy of physics has been variously assessed — defenders see proper foundational physics integrated with philosophical-mystical insight, mainstream-physics critics worry about non-falsifiable metaphysical commitments.
⧖
I. Time
The 1970s-80s period of Bohm's mature philosophical-physical synthesis.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Relational
Grain: Continuous
Freedom: Deterministic
Traversability: Non-Linear
Direction: Bi-directional
Dimensionality: One
✦
II. Space
The non-local-implicate space that the doctrine describes.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Relational
Curvature: Flat
Dimensionality: Three
Locality: Non-Local
◉
III. Matter
The implicate-order foundation of all material phenomena.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Relational
Conservation: Conserved
Dimensionality: Three
Locality: Non-Local
◎
IV. Observer
The disciplined-physical-philosophical observer as proper subject.
Attributes
Time Instance: Single
Space Instance: Single
Knowledge Extent: Partial
Knowledge Retainment: Partial
Physicality: Embodied
Agency: Active
Number: Plural
Metaphysical Agency: Impersonal
⚡
V. Energy
The undivided cosmic-physical-philosophical energies.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Substantival
Conservation: Conserved
Dispersibility: Reversible
⧉
VI. Information
The implicate-order content as proper-philosophical-physical material.
Attributes
Ontological Status: Substantival
Cosmic Conservation: Conserved
Personal Conservation: Conserved
Granularity: Continuous
Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint
Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.
Computed school proximity
The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.
How Wholeness and the Implicate Order resolves each dilemma
29 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 19 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 28 unaligned.
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%)
1 mainstream position
Matter · 7 dilemmas · 5 distinctive
What stuff is — fundamental, relational, or appearance.
Distinctive · only 15% of schools agree
(30/202)
What is money?
The question of what money is — a measured store of real value, an agreed-on practice, a relational ledger of debts, or just a name we apply to many different things — sits behind every argument about inflation, cryptocurrency, debt, and the state.
Money is the ledger of obligations among real people.
On relational views, money is not a substance you have; it is a record of who owes whom what. Debts and credits are real because the relations they track are real — to kin, to community, to ancestors, to land. Money is the form this …
Roads not taken
Money is a real institution with intrinsic features. (54%) ·
Money is a social practice — its content is what we make it. (16%) ·
“Money” names a family of practices — the definition question is nominal. (8%)
Distinctive · only 15% of schools agree
(30/202)
What is a nation?
Whether a nation is a real moral community with intrinsic character, a constructed legal-political artifact, a web of kinship and shared history, an imagined community, or a conventional partition of a deeper unity — these are real ontological positions with sharply different political downstream.
A nation is the web of kinship, ancestry, and shared land that hosts a people.
On relational views, the nation is the relational fabric — extended kinship, ancestral inheritance, shared ecology, communal practice — that hosts a people across generations. Borders matter less than belonging; lineage and land carry the weight that political structures only ratify.
Roads not taken
A nation is a real moral community with intrinsic character. (54%) ·
A nation is a constructed polity — a project, not a discovery. (16%) ·
“Nation” names a family of practices imaginatively held together. (8%)
Distinctive · only 15% of schools agree
(30/202)
What makes someone male or female?
Whether sex is a real biological kind, a constructed social category, a relational identity, a label applied to varied phenomena, or a conventional distinction within a deeper unity is the ontological question the contemporary dispute about gender is mostly about.
Sex and gender are constituted by relations of recognition.
On relational views, identity is not a property a person has alone; it is constituted by the web of recognition the person sits in. What makes someone a man or a woman in any thick sense is the relations of kinship, community, ritual, and recognition …
Roads not taken
Sex is a real biological kind with given content. (54%) ·
Gender is constructed; what counts as male or female reflects practice. (16%) ·
“Male” and “female” are family-resemblance terms — no single essence. (8%)
Distinctive · only 15% of schools agree
(30/202)
Should we edit the human germline?
Whether human nature is a given biological kind, a constructed category, a relational achievement, a family-resemblance cluster, or a conventional distinction within deeper unity is the ontological question the policy debate over heritable gene editing is mostly about.
Personhood is constituted by relations of descent and kinship; germline editing reshapes the relational fabric.
On relational views, what makes someone a person is the web of kinship, ancestry, and community they sit in — not a property the body carries alone. Heritable editing intervenes in exactly this fabric: the lineage that ancestors handed on, the descent that descendants will …
Roads not taken
Human nature is a real biological kind given by reproductive biology or by creation; editing the germline transgresses what is given. (54%) ·
The categories we count as 'human' are emergent from practice; germline editing is a practice-revision like any other. (16%) ·
'Human nature' is a cluster term without a single essence; the editing question is empirical, not metaphysical. (8%)
Distinctive · only 16% of schools agree
(33/202)
Is the world created from nothing?
Creatio ex nihilo is one of the most distinctive Western-theological claims. Whether matter was created from nothing, eternally exists, or is sustained moment-by-moment turns on what kind of thing matter is.
Matter is constituted by relations; the question of 'from what?' presupposes substance.
On this view, matter is not a stuff but a patterning — the standing relations among things, ancestors, processes, and places. The creatio-ex-nihilo question doesn't quite arise, because the ontology has no slot for a free-standing substance to be created or eternal. What persists is …
Roads not taken
Yes — matter was created and is conserved as a real substance. (55%) ·
Matter is real but emerges from something deeper — neither bedrock nor created-from-nothing. (23%) ·
Matter arises and dissolves through cosmic rounds; neither created from nothing nor eternal. (4%)
Observer · 37 dilemmas · 5 distinctive
Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.
Distinctive · only 15% of schools agree
(30/202)
When does a person begin?
The political question of abortion sits atop an older ontological one: at what point does there exist a someone — a being with moral standing — rather than merely the materials from which one will form?
Personhood is conferred by being-in-relation.
On relational views, person was never the name of a thing that exists on its own — it is the name of a node in a web of recognition, obligation, kinship, and ecology. The question of when a being becomes a person is the question …
Roads not taken
A person exists from conception — when a new being comes into existence. (54%) ·
A person comes into being gradually, as the capacities of a mind develop. (16%) ·
The question presupposes a fact of the matter that isn’t there. (8%)
Distinctive · only 15% of schools agree
(30/202)
What is marriage?
Behind every disagreement about how marriage should be defined is a prior disagreement about what kind of thing it is — a given order to be recognized, a practice to be negotiated, or a web of relations to be woven.
Marriage is constituted by the web of relations it creates.
On relational views, marriage is not a thing in itself but a node in a web — a configuration of obligations to children, extended kin, ancestors, ecology, and community. Its definition is what the network of relations is, and any attempt to specify it apart …
Roads not taken
Marriage has a given form — it’s a kind of thing we recognize, not make. (54%) ·
Marriage is a practice we shape — its content is what we make it. (16%) ·
“Marriage” names a family of practices — the definition question is nominal. (8%)
Distinctive · only 15% of schools agree
(30/202)
What is our place in nature?
Whether humans are masters of nature, members of nature, or makers of nature is not a question climate science can settle. It depends on what nature is, what we are, and what kind of relationship is possible between us.
Embedded in a web — partners with the more-than-human world.
On these views, humans were never outside nature, and the question of our 'place in' it is the question of how to live within the relations that already constitute us. Plants, animals, rivers, ancestors, descendants are not resources or stage scenery; they are kin and …
Roads not taken
Active in a real nature — we cultivate, steward, transform. (48%) ·
Nature is partly what we make of it — concepts, practices, and minds shape the world. (15%) ·
Subject to a real natural order we did not make. (12%)
Distinctive · only 15% of schools agree
(30/202)
Should we colonize space?
The drive to extend human presence beyond Earth is sometimes framed as the next chapter of stewardship, sometimes as hubris, sometimes as escape from problems we ought to solve here. Which it is depends on what we take our relationship to nature to be.
Colonisation continues the work that ended the wisdom of seven-generation thinking.
On relational views, space colonisation is the abstract endpoint of the same pattern that produced ecological crisis on Earth: humans treating themselves as separate from the more-than-human world they are actually inside. To go to Mars in the spirit of leaving Earth is to leave …
Roads not taken
Cultivating worlds beyond Earth is the next form of stewardship. (48%) ·
The 'space frontier' is partly what we make of it. (15%) ·
Nature includes its limits; colonisation is bounded by what the cosmos allows. (12%)
Distinctive · only 15% of schools agree
(30/202)
Is genetic engineering of food stewardship or domination?
Editing the genomes of the plants and animals we eat is either the natural continuation of breeding — careful improvement of what is given — or a category error that treats biology as raw material rather than as living kind.
Editing the genome cuts into the relational fabric; we should be very slow.
On relational views, organisms are not isolated substrates whose genomes can be edited without consequence; they are nodes in webs of mutual constitution with soils, ecologies, ancestors, and human cultivars. Genetic editing changes the node in ways the web has not had time to integrate. …
Roads not taken
Genetic modification is cultivation by other means. (48%) ·
What counts as a 'natural' genome is itself a construction. (15%) ·
Biology is what it is; we modify it within real biological constraints. (12%)
7 mainstream positions
What happens to "you" when you die?
You were always a pattern. The pattern propagates.
18%
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?
An AI’s standing is constituted by the relations it enters.
15%
Do animals have moral standing comparable to humans?
An animal's standing is constituted by its place in the relational fabric.
11%
Could a fetal brain organoid in a petri dish be conscious?
The organoid's standing is constituted by the relations of care around its production.
11%
25 unaligned
Are coincidences ever more than coincidence?
Schools split: 49% / 37% / 8%
—
Are the dead morally present to the living?
Schools split: 44% / 35% / 13%
—
Are there indivisible units of experience?
Schools split: 44% / 37% / 13%
—
Can a civilization recover from collapse?
Schools split: 66% / 17% / 8%
—
Can prayer for someone far away affect them?
Schools split: 49% / 37% / 8%
—
Could causation work backwards?
Schools split: 68% / 17% / 8%
—
Does environmental harm in another country bind me morally?
Schools split: 50% / 29% / 12%
—
Does history have a direction or meaning?
Schools split: 37% / 23% / 19%
—
Does meditation reveal something genuinely timeless?
Schools split: 46% / 33% / 13%
—
Does prayer change God's mind?
Schools split: 46% / 33% / 13%
—
Does the second law of thermodynamics mean something morally?
Schools split: 66% / 17% / 8%
—
How is knowledge of reality produced?
Schools split: 25% / 17% / 13%
—
If a teleporter copied and destroyed you, would you have survived?
Schools split: 36% / 29% / 14%
—
Is divine omniscience compatible with human freedom?
Schools split: 46% / 33% / 13%
—
Is environmental damage ever truly permanent?
Schools split: 66% / 17% / 8%
—
Is memory stored or reconstructed?
Schools split: 44% / 37% / 13%
—
Is reality fundamentally digital?
Schools split: 44% / 37% / 13%
—
Is salvation, liberation, or fulfillment individual or communal?
Schools split: 15% / 14% / 4%
—
Is the arrow of time a real feature of the cosmos, or only of how we describe it?
Schools split: 68% / 17% / 8%
—
Is the asymmetry between memory and anticipation a real feature of time, or just of us?
Schools split: 68% / 17% / 8%
—
Is the late-stage dementia patient still the person their spouse married?
Schools split: 36% / 29% / 14%
—
Is truth universal, tradition-bound, situated, or constructed?
Schools split: 65% / 16% / 10%
—
What kind of religious-theological authority does the tradition recognize?
Schools split: 44% / 16% / 14%
—
What makes someone the same person over time?
Schools split: 36% / 29% / 14%
—
Who is the moral primary — the individual, the community, the cosmos, the class, or the species?
Schools split: 40% / 28% / 14%
—
Information · 4 dilemmas, all mainstream
Is anything truly lost when someone forgets?
Information is conserved — the personal pattern is held even when an individual mind loses it.
39%
Does deleting your data online destroy something real?
Information at the cosmic level isn't destroyed; deletion only obscures access.
39%
Could the dead, in principle, be brought back?
The information that constitutes a person is conserved; restoration is in principle possible.
39%
Is forgiveness ontologically possible?
The offense persists ontologically; forgiveness is real moral work, but it doesn't erase what was.
39%