This is the third time I am going to upload the same video on this blog.
The reason for that is that I think this video is extremely important. I think it gives a way out of a very old problem.
The problem of choice between Monism and Dualism.
It is a video of the physicist David Bohm. It is one of 5 videos that completes an interview with him from 1989 in the Niels Bohr institute in Copenhagen. The whole interview is also uploaded in the post Information Exchange.
In the post Making a Concept of the Whole I already uploaded this video (part 3) again because I think he says some very important things there. In that post I transcribed as good as possible the video, and in the post Make the Quantum World Understandable I already highlighted what struck me most in that video.
But everytime I watch it again (and I did so many times), and every time I think about it, I can only come to one conclusion.
Bohm thinks that the very essense of our world is dualistic.
In this post, I first define the difference between Monism and Dualism (Wikipedia) and give my understanding of Bohm’s view. Then I upload the video again and extract the parts where I think Bohm says our world is dualistic in its very core.
Monism
Monism is any philosophical view which holds that there is unity, that the universe is really just one thing, despite its many appearances.
1. Materialism: only the physical is real, the mental or spiritual can be reduced to the physical.
2. Idealism: only the mind is real.
3. Neutral monism: both the mental and the physical can be reduced to some sort of third substance, or energy.
Dualism
The term dualism was originally used in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourse but has been diluted in general or common usages. Some examples of what can be seen as dualistic.
- Good and Evil
- Male and Female
- Yin and Yang
- Mind and Body
Dualism according to Bohm
Now I do not think that Bohm says that the core of our world is a dualism between Good and Evil, or Male and Female, or Yin and Yang. Maybe he thinks those are dualistic, but it is not what he is talking about here.
What does play a role in his view is the duality between Mind and Body, although not directly. Like many others he thinks that the core of our world might be energy.
But he does not think there is just energy. He says there is something else that is essential, but is not the same.
One can not be reduced to the other. It is something that is really so very common in our day to day life, but does not play a role in measurements. But it has a fundamental effect.
And that other important core element is information.
Here Bohm starts with explaining where his view differs from Niels Bohr, which is the mainstream.
But the one thing I did not agree with, was that this whole was completely, there was no way of making a concept of this whole, And that meant that you cold not make it intelligible, the mathematics could only refere to the probable results of experiments, but not discuss what was actually happening.
He says there are other fields like the electromagnetic field.
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