 |
| David Bohm |
David Bohm (1917 – 1992) is one of many distinguished
theoretical physicists that emerged between the late 19th century and
the middle of the 20th century. Along with such well-known
physicists as Einstein, Bohr, Schrödinger, Pauli, and others, Bohm helped
pioneer concepts in quantum physics, relativity, and the wave-particle duality.
Together these theoretical physicists also began to
recognise, and explain, that things were not always as they seem. Bohm, as with
others, also recognised that attempting to discover the workings of the cosmos
(and the human mind in Bohm’s case) could not be done by looking at the world
piece by piece. Things were much more intricately linked, and entangled, than a
mechanistic worldview could explain.
Early in the dialogues Bohm noted that too often the
world was viewed through a mechanistic lens. In expanding upon this he stated
that there was a ‘…far reaching and pervasive fragmentation that arises out
of the mechanistic world view.’ He went on to distinguish between a fragment
and a part.
He used a metaphor to do so. ‘To hit a watch with a
hammer would not produce parts, but fragments that are separated in ways that
are not significantly related to the structure of the watch.’2
Indeed, as Bohm noted, the words fragment and part
both come to us from Latin. The Latin word fragmentum means a piece
broken off. The Latin word partum, however, means a portion of a
whole. Quite different meanings and consequences.
After many centuries of breaking up phenomena and
trying to explain the resultant mess, at least some sectors of the scientific
world are realising that phenomena cannot be broken; a holistic, systems
view, must be adopted.
The next step must be for other fields of human
endeavour (e.g. economics, politics, business, education, and health) to
recognise this as well.
The step after that is to remove the splitting of
human endeavours into fragments and realise that humanity is part of
this wonderful body called nature.
Notes:
1. David Bohm, Unfolding Meaning, A Weekend of
Dialogue with David Bohm, Ark Paperbacks, London & New York, 1987
2. p.23
No comments:
Post a Comment
This blogsite is dedicated to positive dialoque and a respectful learning environment. Therefore, I retain the right to remove comments that are: profane, personal attacks, hateful, spam, offensive, irrelevant (off-topic) or detract in other ways from these principles.