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Quantum Mechanics

Dr. David Bohm 

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from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POJl3fRavIw

… Bohm thought that the orthodox view of QM was causing confusion, and felt we needed to go beyond that… If I say to you, the cat chased the mouse, you have well defined objects in space and time [all of which becomes Newtonian]… but for Bohm it’s more to be seen as a process [“the chasing”]. The underlying reality of nature is a process, it’s a movement… continuous process and transformation…

… [Bohm was unhappy with the present world, felt that] beyond the ordinary world view there’s a deeper order, an implicate order, how do we uncover this deeper order, which is then a process of constantly unfolding and enfolding, a process in which mind and matter are no longer separate.

Bohm felt security lay in movement, e.g. crossing a stream with stepping stones, can’t stay on one stone, have to go to the next, success in movement…

Bohm left Berkeley and Oppenheimer and went to Princeton, rented a room in the house next to Einstein’s house, spent time together, Einstein’s “spiritual son.”

Einstein contended, regarding interpreting reality, “The Lord is subtle but not malicious, and ultimately the Lord will show us the ultimate level of reality.” But Bohm thought, no, below that there is another level of reality, and below that another. There are an infinite number of realities. On this Bohm and Einstein didn’t agree. For Bohm the universe was inexhaustible; for Einstein, there was an ultimate level, and that would be the end of physics. But the two were very close on most issues.

Near the end of his life he asked, why do we still have two main theories in physics, relativity and QM? And this prompted him to propose the “implicate order” as a new unifying order in physics.

[The physics community began to call his theories “Bohmian Mechanics.” Bohm’s response was, why do they call it that, that’s the last thing it is, it should be called “Bohmian Non-Mechanics” – in that his main concept did not involve moving particles but an underlying substrate of wholeness, the “implicate order.”]