Beyond Bohm 2024, Part 2 – Fragmentation and Wholeness: Bohm and G.W.F. Hegel

Fragmentation and Wholeness: Bohm and G.W.F. Hegel

with Boris Koznjak

Saturday August 24
9:00am PDT  | 12:00pm EDT  | 5:00pm BST  |  6:00pm CEST 
2-hour session.

The session is live and you will be sent the RECORDING.

Among the many well-known philosophical influences on the physics and philosophy of science of David Bohm—ranging from Marxism to Krishnamurti—one important influence has remained almost completely unknown: the German philosopher George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, one of the most important systematic philosophers in the history of Western philosophy and a prominent figure in philosophical idealism. This is indeed an unfortunate historical state of affairs, since Hegel was in fact Bohm’s strongest philosophical influence throughout his mature intellectual life, particularly in his abhorrence of fragmentation and his affection for wholeness, which is prominently reflected in both his physics and his philosophy of science. Moreover, speaking of Bohm as a person, his worldview can also be seen as strongly influenced by specific social propensities and psychological determinants from his early emotional and intellectual development, for which Hegel’s philosophy later served as a rational catalyst. Interestingly, but not unexpectedly, these determinants were strikingly similar to those that led the young Hegel to engage with the concepts of fragmentation and wholeness throughout his philosophical life.

Boris Kožnjak is a historian and philosopher of science, working as a scientific advisor at the Institute of Philosophy in Zagreb, Croatia. He graduated in physics from the Physics Department of the Faculty of Science and Mathematics at the University of Zagreb and received a PhD in philosophy from the Faculty of Philosophy at the same university. His scientific work particularly involves research in the history and philosophy of modern physics, with great attention paid also to the sociology and psychology of science. His work on Bohm includes research on Bohm’s Hegelianism as well as the scientific, historical, and social conditions of the ‘turn’ in the reception of Bohm’s ‘alternative physics’ during the late 1950s.