List,
I thought I'd continue for a moment my monologue arguing for a possible
Peirce-Bohm connection, a spiritual dimension in philosophy as one of
the branches of a scientific metaphysic. I'll quote some passages in
the David Bohm interview earlier commented on. Allow me to preface
these passages with my comment off-list to a member of the CG list and
reposted as part of a message in the New Elements part 3 discussion to
suggest again why I consider this to be a significant moment:
GR: I recently commented off the CG-list:
The point for now is that [Peirce] finds a
place in his work for a
scientific metaphysic, and while opposed to theology as such, includes
a religious branch within it. To my understanding, the intellectual
distancing of, for example, many philosophers from spiritual concerns
(towards materialism, nominalism, atheism, etc) has had the effect of
giving up all that territory to such fundamentalisms as are now
sweeping the world. We need, I believe, spiritual ideas which are
appropriately advanced for our times, and especially the Bohm-Peirce
connection (if one can be established) might be promising towards
reviving interest in an approach to spirituality which is reality based
(as in Scholastic Realism, not unlike Bohm's definition. . .), deep,
scientific (in the sense in which it can form a wing of
metaphysics, etc), and lively, imbuing cold science, logic, computer
sci, etc. with the warm glow of our humanity finally beginning to
explore its deep connectedness to the cosmos at the moment of what I
believe to be its most serious ecological crisis.
Some selected, brief excerpts from "Art, Dialogue, and the Implicate
Order: David Bohm interviewed by Louwrien Wijers," Chapter 5 in David
Bohm: On Creativity edited by Lee Nichol, Routledge, London, 1996.
Q [Wijers]What was reality for you, then?
BOHM Well, reality would mean something that would have some existence
independently of being known. It might be that we would know it, but it
didn't require that we would know it in order to exists. . . . .
Q Was it your belief that there were destructive powers in the then
prevailing mechanistic views in science?
BOHM I was certainly dissatisfied with mechanism. I felt that mechanism
and reductionism were destructive, as you say, that they would lead to
a narrowing down of human thought, to focusing on some small thing,
making it very rigid. Trying to contain life and mind and society and
everything within this mechanism I think would have a bad effect. I
don't think Bohr was actually a mechanist, but I felt that if we did
not have some view of reality, it was unclear what we were talking
about at all. I felt also that Bohr's view could lead to a certain kind
of dogmatism, in which all these questions were just simply dismissed
as having no significance. [127]
Q Is it true that the scientific spirit comes close to a kind of
religious awareness?
BOHM Yes, I would like to say that I read along ago, in some ancient
saying, that there were three basic attitudes of spirit: the
scientific, the artistic, and the religious. [GR: Peirce's trichotomy
is somewhat different: the scientific, 3ns, the religious-artistic,
1ns, the politico-economic-practical, 2ns] They have certain things in
common and certain differences. I think this is essential.
One of the most essential points of the scientific spirit is to
acknowledge the fact, or the interpretation of the fact, whether you
like it or not. This means not to engage in wishful thinking , and not
to reject something just because you don't like it. This is not a
common attitude in life generally, and scientists have been at great
pains in the struggle to establish this spirit. This is obviously
necessary for the artist too. . . The religious spirit requires the
same thing, otherwise it will get lost in self-deception, as happens so
easily.
. . . .
[O]ne needs to understand the reality of the process. [128]
[re: quantum theory and the implicate order]
Now, I tried to get some idea what might be the process implied by
the mathematics of the quantum theory, and this process is what I call enfoldment.
The mathematics itself suggests a movement in which everything, any
particular element of space, may have a field which unfolds into the
whole and the whole enfold in it. An example of that would be a
hologram. . .
The suggestion is that if you look at the mathematics of the
quantum theory it describes a movement of just this nature, a movement
of waves that unfold and enfold throughout the whole of space. You
could therefore say that everything is enfolded in this whole, or even
in each part, and that it then unfolds. I call this the implicate
order, the enfolded order, and this unfolds into the explicate order,
in which everything is separated. . .
. . . The best analogy to illustrate the implicate order is the
hologram, as I said. I contrast this to a photograph. Every part of the
hologram contains some information about the
