Trained in quantum physics, first at the Pennsylvania State University and later at the University of California, Berkeley, where he obtained his PhD in Physics. In 1951 Bohm wrote a classic textbook entitled Quantum Theory, in which he presented a clear account of the orthodox, Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics. The Copenhagen interpretation was formulated mainly by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in the 1920s and is still highly influential today. But even before the book was published, Bohm expressed grave doubts that a theory founded on indeterminism and chance, could give us a true view of the Universe around us.
The reason Bohm departed from the mainstream physics community, was his troubling concern that the two “pillars” of modern physics: quantum mechanics and relativity theory, actually contradict each other.
This contradiction is not just in minor details but is very fundamental, because quantum mechanics requires reality to be discontinuous, non-causal, and non-local, whereas relativity theory requires reality to be continuous, causal, and local.
Hence, contrary to widespread understanding even among scientists, the “new physics” is self-contradictory at its foundation and is far from being a finished new model of reality.
Bohm later developed what is known as Bohmian mechanics, a radical departure of the traditional quantum mechanics. Here, Bohm shows us that the bizarre behaviour of the subatomic particles, a behaviour that quantum physicists have not been able to explain, might be caused by unobserved subquantum forces and particles. Indeed, the apparent weirdness might be produced by hidden means that pose NO conflict with ordinary ideas of causality and reality.
In fact, during his experiments, Bohm was surprised to find that once electrons were in a plasma, they stopped behaving like individuals and started behaving as if they were part of a larger and interconnected whole. He later remarked that he frequently had the impression that the sea of electrons was in some sense alive. Bohm extended his research to the study of electrons in metals. Once again the seemingly haphazard movements of individual electrons managed to produce highly organized overall effects. He showed that their individual, haphazard movement concealed a highly organized and cooperative behaviour called plasma oscillation. This intimation of an order underlying apparent “chaos” was pivotal in Bohm's development. Bohm’s innovative work in this area established his reputation as a theoretical physicist. In 1959 a seminal paper of Aharonov and Bohm was published, which described one of the most remarkable experiments in the 20th century: the underrated Aharonov-Bohm effect.
The Aharonov–Bohm effect or AB, sometimes called the Ehrenberg–Siday–Aharonov–Bohm effect, is a quantum mechanical phenomenon in which an electrically charged particle is affected by an electromagnetic field (E, B), despite being confined to a region in which both the magnetic field B and electric field E are zero. The underlying mechanism is the coupling of the electromagnetic potential with the complex phase of a charged particle's wavefunction, and the Aharonov–Bohm effect is accordingly illustrated by interference experiments.
The Aharonov–Bohm effect illustrates the physicality of electromagnetic potentials, Φ and A, whereas previously it was possible to argue that only the electromagnetic fields, E and B, were physical and that the electromagnetic potentials, Φ and A, were non-existent or purely “mathematical constructs”. This is false. Electromagnetic potentials are real capable of affecting matter and were the cornerstone of the original Maxwell's equations, based on Faraday’s lines of force that reside in space NOT in objects. Maxwell incorporated potentials (magnetic vector potential & electric scalar potential), because he viewed electromagnetism as perturbations in a fluid aether.
This electromagnetic potential was located in the medium that fills space or Aether, before mainstream science concealed their existence as physical fields, imbibed in an actual material medium. In fact, despite its extreme importance, the AB effect is presented, in most of the books dealing with electromagnetism and quantum physics, mainly from a theoretical point of view, (Shadowitz, 1988; Feynman et al., 1965; Felsager, 1998), while experimental aspects are disregarded for NOT supporting an “empty space.”
Bohm asserts that the Nature of things is NOT reducible to fragments or particles, as per the mainstream scientific mindset diktat. He argues for a holistic view of the Universe. He demands that we learn to regard matter and life as a whole, coherent domain, which he calls the Implicate Order. Most other physicists discard Bohm's logic without bothering to scrutinize it. In 1980 he published his seminal work Wholeness and the Implicate Order in which he suggested that all the phenomena that appear in the world, whether fundamental particles or thoughts in the mind, emerge out of a deeper order of reality (Aether), their character varying according to the context.
To Bohm and in the same way to Dirac, space is NOT empty as “modern physics” wants us to believe.
Applying this concept, Bohm shows us the reason subatomic particles are able to remain in contact with one another regardless of the distance separating them is NOT because they are “sending” some sort of mysterious signal back and forth, but because their separateness is an illusion. Bohm explains that the ultimate nature of physical reality is NOT a collection of separate objects (as it appears to us), but rather it is an undivided whole that is immersed, connected, shaped and sustained by this medium or energy (aka Aether); filling the alleged “empty space”, in a perpetual dynamic flux. This undivided whole is not static but rather in a constant state of flow and change, a kind of invisible Aether from which all things arise and into which all things eventually dissolve. Indeed, even mind and matter are united. Bohm refers to his theory as the holomovement. The terms holo and movement refer to two fundamental features of reality.
The manifest world is part of what Bohm refers to as the "Explicate Order." It is secondary, derivative; it "flows out of the law of the Implicate Order." Within the Implicate Order, there is a "totality of forms that have an approximate kind of recurrence (changing), stability, and separability." It is these forms, according to Bohm, that make up our manifest world.
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