A perspective on interconnectedness from quantum mechanical physicist and philosopher, David Bohm (1917-1992)

“…Indeed, Bohm believes that our almost universal tendency to fragment the world and ignore the dynamic interconnectedness of all things is responsible for many of our problems, not only in science, but in our lives and our society as well. For instance, we believe we can extract the valuable parts of the earth without affecting the whole. We belive it is possible to treat parts of our body and not be concerned with the whole. We believe we can deal with various problems in our society, such as crime, poverty, and drug addiction, without addressing the problems in our society as a whole, and so on.

“…Similarly, he believes that dividing the universe up into living and nonliving things also has no meaning. Animate and inanimate matter are inseparably interwoven, and life, too, is enfolded throughout the totality of the universe. Even a rock is in some way alive, says Bohm, for life and intelligence are present not only in all matter, but in ‘energy,’ ‘space,’ ‘time,’ ‘the fabric of the entire universe,’ and everything else we…view as separate things.”

“In his general theory of relativity Einstein astounded the world when he said that space and time are not separate entities, but are smoothly linked and part of a larger whole he called the space-time continuum. Bohm takes this idea a giant step further. He says that everything in the universe is part of a continuum. Despite the apparent separateness of things at the explicate level, everything is a seamless extension of everything else, and ultimately even the implicate and explicate orders blend into each other.

“…Indeed, Bohm believes that our almost universal tendency to fragment the world and ignore the dynamic interconnectedness of all things is responsible for many of our problems, not only in science, but in our lives and our society as well. For instance, we believe we can extract the valuable parts of the earth without affecting the whole. We belive it is possible to treat parts of our body and not be concerned with the whole. We believe we can deal with various problems in our society, such as crime, poverty, and drug addiction, without addressing the problems in our society as a whole, and so on.

“…Similarly, he believes that dividing the universe up into living and nonliving things also has no meaning. Animate and inanimate matter are inseparably interwoven, and life, too, is enfolded throughout the totality of the universe. Even a rock is in some way alive, says Bohm, for life and intelligence are present not only in all matter, but in ‘energy,’ ‘space,’ ‘time,’ ‘the fabric of the entire universe,’ and everything else we…view as separate things.”

The Holographic Universe, Micheal Talbot, Harper Perennial, 1991, pp. 48-50.

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