Implicate order

Michael D.S. Cocks - 1 November 1990

Experience of synchronicity (co-incidence) has occasioned thoughts on the inter-connectedness of things.

If we attempt to test for the “paranormal” in the laboratory, we are assuming local causes, that is we are attempting to find a causal, albeit “paranormal” relationship between event A and event B.

In 1964 J.S. Bell published a mathematical proof which came to be known as Bell’s theorem. One of the implications of Bell’s theorem is that, at a deep and fundamental level, the “separate parts” of the universe are connected in an intimate and immediate way. The theorem showed that either the statistical predictions of quantum theory or the principle of local causes is false. The Clauser-Freedman experiment shows that the statistical predictions of quantum theory are correct, so therefore the conclusion is plain—“one is led to a new notion of unbroken wholeness which denies the classical idea of analysability of the world into separately and independently existent parts” [David Bohm, 1974.] In the “world” Bohm, the well-known theoretical physicist of London University, includes events of consciousness.

But in that unbroken wholeness, ten or twenty-four dimensions are supposed to be necessary for the manifestation of reality as we understand it and it appears that the creator of quantum theory, physicist Wemer Heisenberg, argued for other-dimensional orderedness for physical phenomena. Shortly before his death he argued that what was truly fundamental in nature was not the subatomic particles themselves, but the symmetries that lay beyond them.

These fundamental symmetries could be thought of as archetypes of all matter and the ground for material existence. The elementary particles themselves would be simply the material realizations of these underlying symmetries. [p94 Peat, F. David, Synchronicity, the bridge between matter and mind, Bantum, 1987.]

Bohm speaks of this other dimension as “the Implicate Order”. A reader wishing to explore these ideas more deeply would be amply repaid by reading Bohm’s Wholeness and the Implicate Order 1980.

In this work it is noted that quantum mechanical (subatomic) theory is mathematical in character, and that there is no definite concept of matter in the quantum domain. [p74]

It was only at the end of his life that Heisenberg argued for other-dimensional symmetries. It is this argument however that Bohm is developing when he writes: [p64]

“We ought to be free to consider the hypothesis that the results of individual quantum-mechanical measurements are determined by a multitude of new kinds of factors, outside the context of what can enter into quantum theory. These factors would be represented mathematically by a further set of variables, describing the states of new kinds of entities existing in a deeper, sub-quantum-mechanical level and obeying qualitatively new types of individual laws. Such entities and their laws would then constitute a new side of nature, a side that is, for the present ‘hidden’.”

Bohm admits that the majority of modern theoretical physicists have come to reject any suggestion of this kind. Nevertheless he develops an extension of the mathematical formulae governing quantum-mechanical events, which do not affect the universally accepted validity of their mathematical logic in their application in physical theory. They do however appear to provide a workable mathematical logic for taking cognizance of such hidden variables as may be discovered.

It would seem that Bohm’s logic is acceptable mathematically, but is a long way from being proven. On the other hand Bohm was led to work out his mathematical logic in order to accommodate other important findings in the realm of quantum mechanics. These include—

• Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle which seems to demand that the consciousness of the experimenter be part of the experiment with the subatomic particles.

• Bell’s Theorem which demonstrates that either quantum mechanics mathematics is wrong (disproved by the Clauser-Freedman experiments) or the common scientific view of reality is profoundly deficient.

• The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Thought Experiment showing apparent faster-than-light communication between pairs of photons flying in opposite directions. Either one of the pair ‘knows’ what the other is doing, or one photon is changing the state of the distant photon. John Bell a British theoretical physicist working at CERN, in Switzerland, first proved this in 1969. Physicists have carried out several experiments on photon pairs and similar systems. All of these experiments have proved the predictions of quantum physics. Their results are inexplicable on the basis of any theory that excludes non-local interactions. An important confirmation are the experiments conducted by Alain Aspect at the Institute of Optics in Paris. [Scientific American, January 1988] (As an explanation for this apparent impossibility Bohm suggests that the separating particles are really the same particle seen from the point of view of a higher dimension. [p187]).

Much disciplined thought leads Bohm to conclude that “the explicate and manifest order of consciousness is not ultimately distinct from that of matter in general” [p208] and he notes [p209]:

We introduced the notion of a higher-dimensional reality which projects into lower-dimensional elements that have not only a non-local and non-causal relationship but also just the sort of mutual enfoldment that we have suggested for mind and body.

It is not possible to present a proper picture of a complex matter in such a small compass. There is a growing literature and it deserves attention. The purpose of this article is to raise the question whether all the implications of Bell’s Theorem should be taken into account by Skeptics in investigating claims for the paranormal, or whether they will be dismissed a priori.

Bohm’s theoretical mathematics is consistent with the EPR paradox and with orthodox quantum mechanics. Moreover, the EPR paradox, Bell’s theorem are nowhere to my knowledge challenged. Skeptic Martin Gardner, in Vol 11, No 2 (Winter 1986/87) of The Skeptical Inquirer, notes about Bell’s Theorem that it provided for the first time a way of testing the EPR paradox in the laboratory. Many such tests have been made, with even better ones under way. The EPR paradox has been strongly confirmed, at least for short distances; but if QM is correct, the correlation will never be lost as long as the particles continue through space. Working physicists may still shrug and say: “So what? We knew it all along. That’s just the way QM works.” But the troubling question won’t go away. What connects the particles? Bohm has always maintained, with Einstein [against Nils Bohr, as Dugald Murdoch points out in his able book on the subject] that QM is incomplete—that some kind of field [or dimensions], on a level not yet explored, provides the “connectedness” that keeps the two particles in a single quantum system.

We need to mention a further implication of the EPR paradox which is that all particles have been together are always together in the EPR sense. Perhaps beginning with the Big Bang, the totality of particles have this relationship with each other…and with Bohm, mind is an aspect of this totality.

Martin Gardner quotes David Mermin, a physicist at Cornell University, who recently divided physicists into three classes with respect to their attitude towards the EPR: 1) Those who are troubled by it; 2) Those who are not troubled by it, but invent explanations that either are wrong or miss the point by doing no more than restate the formalism of QM; 3) Those who all not troubled, but refuse to say why. The last position, Mermin added, “is unassailable”.

I believe that we should join the ranks of those who are troubled by it, leave room in our thinking about the paranormal for an attitude other than mechanistic reductionism.

It seems to me that there are some important pointers in all this for Skeptics scientifically investigating the claims of the paranormal.

1. Laboratory experiments patently are essential to scientific investigation. Laboratory experiments however, assume local causes, and are not geared to take account of an unknown number of distant events beyond the ken of the experimenters in an “unbroken wholeness” where we may have a “higher dimension of reality which projects into the lower-dimensional elements that have not only a non-local and non-causal relationship but also just the sort of mutual enfoldment we have suggested for mind and body.”

If the “paranormal” occurs, then Bell’s theorem suggests that it occurs as part of this unbroken whole. And if this is the case, it can bring despair to those who would like “scientifically to prove” that “paranormal” events do or do not occur. But if the universe implied by the EPR experiments is real, then it will be hard to distinguish between “normal” and “paranormal”. Thus it is arguable that both Skeptics and the parapsychologists of the last 60 years or more, are looking in the wrong direction if they try to demonstrate paranormal events in terms of localised cause and effect.

2. If we were to accept the implications of Bell’s Theorem, this would in no way detract from the real accomplishments and successes of Skeptics in unmasking the fraud, credulity and superstition which everywhere abound. But it should make us less dogmatic in believing that consciousness is an activity confined to our brains, more receptive to a differing view of reality.

3. We need to be aware that even physicists frame their theories in the light of philosophies, which by their nature are unprovable. Nils Bohr, for instance, was influenced by Kierkegaard and Hoffding, Einstein was not. Similarly David Bohm is influenced by holistic concepts, while behaviourist psychologists J.B. Watson and E.F. Skinner are influenced by the reductionist determinism of some nineteenth century physics.

Each person must intuitively, or by faith, take a philosophical stand, unprovable in itself. I hope that Skeptics will not become special pleaders for only one out of several valid philosophies.