Events

David Bohm’s interpretation of quantum mechanics can be understood as driven by a need for an intelligible account of the physics of the world. But Bohm went beyond physics and linked the physics to metaphysics, especially the metaphysics of consciousness. I will explore how the drive towards an intelligible account of the world and our place in it led Bohm to a view of nature which is arguably a form of panpsychism.

In this installment of The Future Scientist series, we will consider the interesting triad formed by the words “evidence”, “experts” and “extraterrestrial”. On October 19th 2017 an interstellar object called ‘Oumuamua was detected passing relatively close to the Earth. Its behavior was anomalous-enough to interpret it as either a natural object of a type never seen before, or as an artificial object. Whether ‘Oumuamua is some sort of extraterrestrial technological debris or not we cannot say with certainty now, but we can certainly prepare ourselves to search for more.

David Bohm’s theory of quantum mechanics is mostly known as a way to give a fully deterministic account of quantum mechanics. For this reason, it has often been thought that Bohm’s aim was to restore the determinism of classical physics, and he has been criticized as conservative and unwilling to accept the radical implications of quantum physics.

It is well known that David Bohm’s causal interpretation of quantum mechanics and its development with Basil Hiley offers a realist ontological view of particles, waves, quantum potential, and active information (Bohm 1952, 1985, 1988, 1989, 1990; Bohm and Hiley 1975, 1987, 1993). However, the other epistemological and metaphysical underpinnings of the causal interpretation are still in need of detailed scrutiny. This presentation will explore two other realist components in Bohm’s thinking which bear some resemblance to Aristotle’s philosophy. The familiar argument from laws to the existence of the quantum objects and the reality of their properties will be only briefly mentioned. The focus will be on Bohm’s peculiar methodology of intuitive intelligibility (II), and his argument for the two metaphysical properties of causal powers, which bear clear similarities to Aristotle’s epistemology and metaphysics.

Il seminario si articola in un’alternanza di momenti di spiegazione e altri di sperimentazione pratica delle idee del fisico quantistico David Bohm: la vita e lo sviluppo del suo pensiero, la tecnica metamorfica riletta alla luce del concetto di ordini di realtà, la connessione tra fisica e senso della vita, e la ricerca del superamento della coscienza individuale attraverso il dialogo bohmiano.

In this instalment of The Future Scientist series we will join Prof. Ingold in his venture to heal the bifurcation between imagined and real worlds. After having tackled what he deems to be the central question of anthropology (namely, why people perceive their environments in different ways), the challenge now is, as he puts it, “to make allowance for imagination without reopening the gap between humanity and nature”.

Stephen is a poet of non-negotiable truths; a teacher who always talks about the very same ineffable but never says the same thing twice. He is sometimes known as “grief-walker” due to his insistence on avoiding the pervasive absurdity of the current cultural imperative to “die not dying”. Life includes everything (also death). Is science dying? Is dying a deity? In the face of culture failure, we will discuss a method of inquiry that can reveal (and perhaps heal) our death phobia, grief illiteracy, and amnesia of ancestry. Beyond the current pernicious triad “cope, hope & dope”, we will acknowledge our own ectopic ideas and cultural homelessness.

We are living in a time of anxiety and uncertainty. As more environmental damage is done, the means to repair it seems to be getting less. It is increasingly difficult to know what to trust in politics and the media. Spiritual traditions survive, but the authority they once had has passed to science and so it might seem that the idea of ‘The Sacred’ has disappeared.

But as science reveals more and more about the place of the earth in the cosmos there is a growing awareness of how precious our living world is and of how inter-dependent we are with it. Perhaps this is not only a scientific discovery but also the re-appearance of the sacred in a form fit for our times.

The topic of the sacred is immense, as I confirmed to myself when I wrote a very long chapter on it in The Matter with Things. I have chosen to approach it here by directing our attention, as it might seem at first, to one side: on the soul. I will argue that the sacred exists not simply in this or that thing—an object, a place, or an act—but in the relationship between whatever it is beyond ourselves that we recognise as sacred and that part of our being that has been traditionally referred to as the soul; that this relationship is one of the reasons for evolved beings such as ourselves to have come into existence; that whatever else it may be, the soul is a faculty, like intellect or eyesight, but much more than, and more important than, either; and that our sense of the sacred is both driven by, and in turn drives, the actively receptive attention paid by the soul. I suggest that the soul is in process, and that it is one task of our lives to grow the soul—an important task, because much depends on it: we can, like attentive or neglectful gardeners, nourish, stunt the growth of, or extinguish, that soul. I suggest that therefore we need first to attend to our souls if we are to recover the sacred, and I make a few exploratory forays into what we can (and cannot) say about the soul, and how it might be integrated into a new cosmology.