Verbs, Not Nouns

It's with David Bohm's writings that appeared in the 1950s that we began to open the door further to the potential sensed in Whitehead's earlier speculative philosophy.

Bohm, one of the most important theoretical physicists of the 20th century, cast aside the mechanistic assumptions of Cartesian materialism as he sought a radical new understanding, not only of quantum physics but reality itself, as he developed a new ontology that wove together quantum physics and metaphysics.

Over the next thirty years, his explorations began to point us in a new direction, one that will have a profound impact on how we are to educate the next generation.

The physical world around us, Bohm guided us to understand, is just not the extent of reality but a momentary manifestation of a fluctuating soup of energy, quantum potential, that is in a dynamic realm beyond space and time.

He called this unformed realm the 'implicate order', one filled with an energy potential far greater than the formed reality of the physical world we can see and sense, that which he called the 'explicate order'.

Diving into Bohm's thinking is mind-bending. But quantum physics so profoundly shifts how we understand reality that the journey is infinitely worthwhile – in fact, it's essential if we are to begin to truly appreciate the Hidden Potential within each of us that we have come to experience as Creative Genius.

But for now, let's at least peel back one layer of the onion, the very nature of the language that we use to talk about reality. Bohm recognized that it was hard to talk about this new reality with a language defined by nouns.

He suggested that perhaps we imagine a new language, defined by verbs, for all matter exists just in a moment of unfolding only to enfold back into a timeless potential – a universally connected flow of energy that he called 'holomovement'.

Next: Sensing Surprise