Changing your worldview of the Universe

Socrates - That is a good explanation from my perspective, but I have been wading through quantum stuff for decades.

Angel let me try it another way. Amongst other concepts Bohm is saying we make a mistake by viewing things separately if trying to understand the whole Universe. He is saying any part of this Universe can lead to an understanding of the entirety of it because it all follows the same behavior (i.e., laws of physics). If for instance you were astute and understanding enough, you could pick up a grain of sand at any beach and just from the information in it, know of the moons of the 4th planet out from the star Antares while also knowing, if Antares should even have a 4th planet, much less a moon. Bohm believed each piece of the Universe contained all of the information needed to make up an identical Universe, just in fuzzier and fuzzier detail as the piece grows smaller.

Putting it another way, you and I are fragments of humanity. If one of us is examined some conclusions applicable to all of humanity may be gleaned. Fifty years or so ago a human examiner would probably conclude all humans probably have two arm, 2 legs, eyes, ears, a brain, a heart, etc. Today because our understanding is greater we could probably make some generalizations regarding DNA, and isotopic examination of your atoms would probably verify which planet we come from. Some generalizations about life on earth could possibly also be made. Oxygen content of the atmosphere, gravitational pull from the structure of the bones, and a bunch of other stuff ancient people didn't know to look for. So in this fashion all of us are representative not only of the whole structure of our Universe, but also of humanity as a whole and also representative of the entire Universe as we are a tiny, tiny, tiny part of it. Sure we would be different from each other, but this is why the process of sampling usually involves taking more than just one sample. The more samples collected, the more accurately generalizations about humanity could be made with a better picture of it resulting. Each of us is not only a part of the whole, but also contains all of the information needed to understand the whole.

Is it like all there is to know and everything that ever happened are encoded in everything?

Also, although not discussed in this particular video, Bohm believed that all of creation can be viewed as being akin to a onion, with each of the 11 dimensions being one more concentric ring layer or onion skin. At the center would lay 'an effective central charge' and what we view as the Universe we live in would be the outer skin.

This would have applications for instant quantum effects at a distance as the effects would go through the sphere's center and out again from there rather than be forced to slowly travel around the outside of the sphere. Note also every part of the Universe we can perceive is part of the same outer onion skin.

Where Bohm's theories bordered on Heresy was his position that if the Universe is just information that can be expressed mathematically, and it carries charges (or quantum effects) and processes information and reacts to information (i.e., changes in states of matter), then it may be possible to argue that the Universe itself is a living organism.

Bohm died before the tying together of alternative Cosmological String Theories about the nature of the Universe into the current M Theory (see for M theory), however there still exists no true conflict as Bohm's onion skin approach was a visualization simplification for sake of understanding the structure of this Universe, rather than an attempt to describe all possible alternative realities and how they inter relate.

Ekself, quite possibly so. Bohm is saying it here is about changing our perspective from just looking at a leaf to understanding that everything you could possibly wish to know about the tree is there in that leaf, also about other trees nearby too.

How charming. What color is your spin?

Speaking of color and spin, I saw where an artist left a camera, lens open, in a deserted theatre while a movie played, begining to end, on a large screen. The resulting photo showed the movie screen as a glowing white light!

It made me wonder if reality isnt more like a glowing light than the segments we percieve.

Anyway quantum physics shows how little we know about our world.