15.12 The implicate order and consciousness
Several physicists have already suggested that quantum mechanics and consciousness are closely related and that the understanding of the quantum formalism requires that ultimately we bring in consciousness in some role or other (e.g. Wigner [17], Everett [18] and Squires [19]). Throughout this book it has been our position that the quantum theory itself can be understood without bringing in consciousness and that as far as research in physics is concerned, at least in the present general period, this is probably the best approach. However, the intuition that consciousness and quantum theory are in some sense related seems to be a good one, and for this reason we feel that it is appropriate to include in this book a discussion of what this relationship might be.
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It takes only a little reflection to see that a similar sort of description will apply even more directly and obviously to consciousness, with its constant flow of evanescent thoughts, feelings, desires, urges and impulses. All of these flow into and out of each other and, in a certain sense, enfold each other (as, for example, we may say that one thought is implicit in another, noting that this word literally means enfolded).
A very clear illustrative example of this enfoldment can be seen by considering what takes place when one is listening to music. At a given moment, a certain note is being played, but a number of previous notes are still ‘reverberating’ in consciousness. Close attention will show that it is the simultaneous presence and activity of all these relates reverberations that is responsible for the direct and immediately felt sense of movement, flow and continuity, as well as for the apprehension of the general meaning of the music. To hear a set of notes so far apart in time that there is no consciousness of such reverberation will destroy altogether the sense of a whole unbroken living moment that gives meaning and force to what is being heard.
The sense of order in the above experience is very similar to what is implied in our model of a particle as a sequence of successive incoming and outgoing waves… Here the outgoing waves would correspond to ‘reverberations’, while the incoming waves would correspond to anticipations (which are also evidently present as we listen to music). The essential point is that the whole movement is contained in this way at any given moment.
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Of course not all of it is conscious at any given moment and a great deal may be unconscious. But even that which is unconscious and vaguely anticipatory may contain a whole movement. The most striking example of this is Mozart saying that the whole composition came to him almost in a flash and that from there on he was simply able to play it or to write it. Thus the whole was unfolded rather as the sequence of spheres is unfolded in our model.
Further examples can be obtained from visual experiences (e.g. as a series of similar frames in a movie sensed simultaneously can give rise to a feeling of movement). What all this suggests is that our most primary experience of consciousness actually is of an implicate order. And our perception of the explicate order is constituted mostly by a series of abstractions from this…To sum up then, in consciousness, as in quantum theory, the explicate order emerges from the implicate order as a relatively stable and self-contained domain and ultimately flows back into the implicate order.
The implicate order is not only the ground of perception, but also the actual process of thought. For thought is based on information contained in the memory. We do not know a great deal of how the memory works at present, but it does not seem that it operates through a one to one correspondence between, for example, an object and an image stored somewhere in the brain. Rather what is relevant for thought is the storage of many abstracted items of information, for example, about shape, colour, the use of the object, the various things with which it is associated, etc. indeed in our customary use of language we say that a certain content is re-collected, thus suggesting that content is collected together from the whole of memory.
….This strongly suggests that somehow our ‘re-collection’ is directly from a whole rather than the result of an algorithm for searching the memory in detail.
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All of this is clearly compatible with the notion that the basic order of the mind is implicate and that the explicate arises as a particular case of this implicate order in much the way that we have suggested in this chapter for the quantum theory and for pre-space. So the previous items of information that have been stored up may be regarded as somehow enfolded in the brain and indeed probably in the rest of the nervous system as well as in the muscles and organs.
It is clear moreover that this information is basically active rather than passive. We may easily verify this in our subjective experience. Suppose, for example, that on a dark night one encounters some shadows. If the memory contains information that there might be assailants in the neighbourhood this can give rise immediately to a sense of danger, with a whole range of possibilities (fight, flight, etc.). This is not what could be called purely a mental process, but includes an involuntary and essentially unconscious process of hormones, heartbeat, and neuro-chemicals of various kinds, as well as physical tensions and movements. However, if we look again and we see that it is only a shadow that confronts us, this thought has a calming effect and all this activity ceases. Such a response to information is extremely common (e.g. information that ‘X’ is a friend or enemy, good or bad etc.). More generally in consciousness, information is seen to be active in all these ways physically, chemically, electrically etc.
…in the present context, it is convenient to introduce the notion that consciousness shows or manifests itself on two sides which may be called the physical and the mental. Active information can serve as a kind of link or ‘bridge’ between these two sides. These two latter are however inseparable, in the sense, for example, that information contained in thought, which we feel to be on the mental side, is at the same time a related neurophysiological, chemical and physical activity (which is clearly what is meant by the ‘material’ side of thought).
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One may then ask what is the relationship between the physical and the mental processes? The answer is that we propose here is that there are not two processes. Rather, it is being suggested that both are essentially the same. This means that that which we experience as mind, in its movement through various levels of subtlety, will in a natural way ultimately move the body by reaching the level of the quantum potential and of the ‘dance’ of particles. There is no unbridgeable gap or barrier between any of these levels. Rather, at each stage some kind of information is the bridge. This implies that the quantum potential acting on atomic particles, for example, represents only one stage in the process.
For the human being, all of this implies a thoroughgoing wholeness, in which mental and physical sides participate very closely in each other. Likewise, intellect, emotion, and the whole state of the body are in a similar flux of fundamental participation. Thus there is no real division between mind and matter, psych and soma. The common term psychosomatic is in this way seen to be misleading, as it suggests the Cartesian notion of two distinct substances in some king of interaction.
Extending this view, we see that each human being similarly participates in an inseparable way in society and in the planet as a whole. What may be suggested further is that such participation goes on to a greater collective mind, and perhaps potentially to some yet more comprehensive mind in principle capable of going indefinitely beyond even the human species as a whole.
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The key point is…that before the advent of the quantum theory, our knowledge of matter as gained from the study of physics would have led us to deny that it could have a mental pole, which would enable it to participate with mind in the relationship that has been described here. We can now say that this knowledge of matter (as well as of mind) had changed in such a way as to support the approach that has been described here.
15.13 further extension to an overall approach
what we have done here opens up the possibility of an overall approach that encompasses all aspects of objective nature and of our subjective experience (e.g. as an observer and a thinker). To develop such an approach, we first note that not only inanimate nature, but also living nature, is to be understood in terms of the implicate order. Consider a tree, for example, which grows from a seed. Actually the seed makes a negligible contribution to the material substance of the plant and to the energy needed to make it grow. The substance comes from the air, water and soil, while the energy comes from the sun. in the absence of a seed, all these move in an implicate order of a relatively low level of subtlety (based, for example, on the order of the constituent particles). This brings about the constant re-creation of inanimate matter in various forms. However, through the information contained in the DNA molecule, the overall process is subtly altered so that it produces a living three instead. All the streams of matter and energy which had hitherto developed in an unorganised way, now begin to bring substance and energy to the plant, which grows and eventually decays to fall back into inanimate matter.
At no stage is there a break in this process. For example one would not wish to say that an ‘inanimate’ molecule of carbon dioxide enters the tree and suddenly becomes ‘alive’, or that the oxygen molecule suddenly ‘dies’ when it leaves the tree. Rather, life is eternally enfolded in matter and more deeply in the underlying ground of a generally holomovement as is mind and consciousness. Under suitable conditions, all of these unfold and evolve to become manifest in ever higher stages of organisation.
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The notion of a separate organism is clearly an abstraction, as is also its boundary. Underlying all this is unbroken wholeness even though our civilisation has developed in such a way as to strongly emphasize the separation into parts.
In this whole process, it is clear that the observer along with his thoughts is contained in an inseparable way. For example, the general theories of physics (including the very one we are proposing here) are an extension of this process. What such a theory produces is a kind of reflection of reality as a whole. As explained in chapter 14, section 14.1, this provides another aspect or appearance of the whole. We may usefully regard this appearance as a kind of mirror through which reality is perceived. Classical physics provided a mirror that reflected only the objective structure of the human being who was the observer. There is no room in this scheme for his mental process which is thus regarded as separate or as a mere ‘epiphenomenon’ of the objective process. As we have seen throughout this book, however, quantum physics interpreted ontologically and extended in a natural way makes possible a reflection even of the subtle mental aspects of the observer. Thus, through this mirror the observer sees ‘himself’ both physically and mentally in the larger setting of the universe as a whole. There is no need, therefore, to regard the observer as basically separate from what he sees, nor to reduce him to an epiphenomenona of the objective process. Indeed the notion of separateness is an abstraction and an approximation valid for only certain limited purposes. More broadly one could say that though the human being, the universe is making a mirror to observe itself. Or visa versa the universe could be regarded as continuous with the body of the human being. After all, this latter, like the plant, gets all its substance and energy from the universe and eventually falls back into it. Evidently the human being could not exist without this context (which has very misleadingly been called an environment).
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In particular we would say here that certain features of theories that have attempted to cover both mind and matter, for example, those proposed by Everett and by Gell-Mann and Hartle, do imply that mind is a rather limited sort of system (that could be completely covered for example by the notion of an ‘information gathering and utilising system’(IGUS)). No doubt mind is capable of doing this sort of thing. But a little observation shows that it is much richer in its capabilities. In particular, if a human being is nothing more than such a system he efficiently reduced to a kind of machine. How then would we understand creativity? Perhaps we could say that it is an illusion brought about by our not having complete knowledge of how the machine works. But we can ask how can it be known that this is all that we are? Thus, in the time of Newton, people compared everything including living beings to a clockwork and at later times the brain and the nervous system were compared to a telephone exchange. It is now being compared to a supercomputer. In each age people use the latest technological developments as models foe the mind. Very probably in another century or so the whole notion of computers will be seen as rather limited and perhaps even outmoded as nineteenth-century machines are now thought to be. Doubtless we will have a still more intricate machine with which one could compare the mind if one chose to do so.
The whole approach seems to be affected with irreducible contingency. There is really no necessity for it at all. We are therefore free, if we so choose, to explore the broader approach to mind and matter, and therefore to the whole of reality, that we have been discussing here and throughout the rest of the book.
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