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Overview

Although it has not yet fully emerged, a profound shift in the modern conceptualization of the world is already implied by novel data and theory developed in recent years. The framework of the emerging paradigm can be seen in the scientific literature of various areas of science but especially in studies of physics and biology.

David Bohm's alternative version of quantum theory is among the most visible developments of the new paradigm, but Bohm is by no means alone. A considerable amount of research regarding the zero point energy of the vacuum has occurred. Harold Puthoff, for example, suggested that the most basic principles of physics may require consideration of the inherent energy of the vacuum to be fully understood. Puthoff's ideas regarding zero point energy converge with Bohm's view that the vacuum has a more fundamental role in physics than is typically assumed.

Another physicist named Evan Harris Walker has developed an alternative version of quantum theory similar to Bohm's. Like Bohm, Walker suggests that consciousness is not just a by product of biochemistry in the brain but a fundamental "nonphysical" force of the world. The development of holonomic brain theory by psychologist Karl Pribram similarly indicates that consciousness is primarily assocaited with nonlocal activity among dendritic microprocesses rather than the biochemical events associated with neural firing. Pribram described a neural holoscape as the basis of the conscious image, exactly analogous to Bohm's holomovement, the basis of physical systems extending into the implicate order beyond space and time. Neither the holoscape nor the holomovement can be contained within local coordinates in space and time.

Ilya Prigogine, the Nobel prize winning chemist, is a colleague of Pribram's and has written on the relevancy of chaos theory to Bohm's physics. In his work on chaos theory, Prigogine described the spontaneous reorganization of far from equilibrium systems. The emergence of correlations far from equilibrium due to fields that were ineffective in a less chaotic system is the same principle that Bohm appeals to as the basis of effects from hidden variables of the holonomic order. Subtle fields impose an unexpected order on chaotic systems through a top down constraint upon the system. Bohm refers to the emergence of correlations between electrons in superconductive material at very low temperatures as one example. Pribram also describes the holoscape as a chaotic system, susceptible to the same sort of top down constraints.

Although there are still many other areas of research that can be described regarding the holonomic paradigm, the related work of these researchers is sufficient to provide an outline of the new world view implied by the holonomic paradigm. It is a change worthy of considerable study. Prigogine refers to the "reenchantment of nature". Walker (2000) stated "We stand at the threshold of a revolution in thinking that transcends anything that has happened in a thousand years". The holonomic paradigm is exactly that. Much as Copernicus taught us that the earth is not the center of the world, the holonomic paradigm indicates that the world manifest to our senses and our instruments is not the whole world but only a corner of a vast reality beyond what has been imagined.