Science, Order, and Creativity
Encyclopedia
Science, Order, and Creativity is a book
by theoretical physicist David Bohm
and physicist and writer F. David Peat
. It was originally published 1987 by Bantam Books
, USA, then 1989 in Great Britain by Routledge
. The second edition, published in 2000 after Bohm`s death, comprises a new foreword by Peat as well as an additional introductory chapter, in which a fictitious dialogue between Bohm and Peat serves to introduce the reader to the context and topics of the book.
In Science, Order and Creativity, the authors emphasize the role of creativity and communication for science and, also beyond science, for humanity as a whole.
and by equating two different kinds of things, based on an act of perception of a similarity. They emphasize the role of communication and art as part of creativity, citing the example of Helen Keller
who, through communication with her mentor Anne Sullivan
was led to understanding a similarity among the sensations of water and the symbolic gesture pressed into her palm which represented it.
2 Science as Creative Perception–Communication: The authors build upon the aspect of communication by discussing science as a social activity and the role of language in science, discussing in particular also the examples of the various interpretations of quantum mechanics, including the objections raised against the causal interpretation of quantum mechanics. They point out that its mathematical basis is open to a range of modifications which extend “beyond current quantum theory”, for instance concerning the role of trajectories.
3 What is Order?: The notion is introduced that all processes take place in an order
, with the particular order depending on context. They distinguish orders of first, second and higher degrees, and interpret randomness
as an order of infinite degree. At the same time, the degree itself depends on the context, and on what is known and taken into consideration concerning the underlying processes. Bohm and Peat further propose to a spectrum of order, with causal laws and statistical laws representing limiting cases of a more general range of possibilities.
4 The Generate Order and the Implicate Order: This chapter introduces the notions of generative order and implicate order, citing examples from, among others, mathematics (fractal
order as proposed by Benoit Mandelbrot
, Fourier series
, and touching upon Goethe
's notion of an Urpflanze and the morphology of plants
) art (from schemata changing from Renaissance painting to the vortex-like order of J. M. W. Turner
to the use of light by Claude Monet
and the exploration of composition and structure by Paul Cézanne
), science (holography, the Green's function
and its relation to Feynman diagram
s and the Huygens principle, as well as Bohm's implicit order
, superimplicate order and holomovement
in an infinite extension). The implicate and generative orders are emphasized as ground for all experience
, accessible to direct experience by perception of well-defined forms, for instance reverberations of earlier notes in music, or the viewing of a scene of a film as a whole, or various resonances of words and images in poetry. Explicate orders, in contrast, are emphasized by society in so far as they are considered absolutely necessary for its survival, and suitable for large-scale organization and technology.
5 Generative Order in Science, Society, and Consciousness: These considerations are carried further, citing among others the works of Conrad Hal Waddington
, Stephen Jay Gould
, Brian Goodwin
and Rupert Sheldrake
towards a generative order that lies beyond both Lamarckism
and Darwinism
. This chapter further provides a view of the role of human creativity
, when attention is allowed to move freely, for putting forth “new sensory orders and structures that form into new perceptions”.
6 Creativity in the Whole of Life: The individual, cosmic and social dimensions are considered. It is held that creativity blockages can be overcome and that “ ‘loosening’ rigidly held intellectual content in the tacit infrastructure of consciousness” plays a main role for awakening creative intelligence.
7 The Order Between and Beyond: Examples of the development of various orders are provided. To solve problems faced by society, there is need to find not merely “orders in between” (as a form of compromise between other orders) but rather to creatively extend to richer “orders beyond” which encompass different orders together in another form. Creativity thus contributes, so the authors, to make it possible to “move towards a new consciousness”.
and science education
, and knowledge management
, among many others. Referencing this book, in the framework of his concept of a Total human ecosystem
, Zev Naveh has also referred to implicate orders as “very important” for multifunctional landscapes in landscape ecology
.
Book
A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...
by theoretical physicist David Bohm
David Bohm
David Joseph Bohm FRS was an American-born British quantum physicist who contributed to theoretical physics, philosophy, neuropsychology, and the Manhattan Project.-Youth and college:...
and physicist and writer F. David Peat
F. David Peat
F. David Peat was born in Waterloo, England and is a holistic physicist and author who has carried out research in solid state physics and the foundation of quantum theory....
. It was originally published 1987 by Bantam Books
Bantam Books
Bantam Books is an American publishing house owned entirely by Random House, the German media corporation subsidiary of Bertelsmann; it is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group. It was formed in 1945 by Walter B. Pitkin, Jr., Sidney B. Kramer, and Ian and Betty Ballantine...
, USA, then 1989 in Great Britain by Routledge
Routledge
Routledge is a British publishing house which has operated under a succession of company names and latterly as an academic imprint. Its origins may be traced back to the 19th-century London bookseller George Routledge...
. The second edition, published in 2000 after Bohm`s death, comprises a new foreword by Peat as well as an additional introductory chapter, in which a fictitious dialogue between Bohm and Peat serves to introduce the reader to the context and topics of the book.
In Science, Order and Creativity, the authors emphasize the role of creativity and communication for science and, also beyond science, for humanity as a whole.
Contents by Chapter
1 Revolutions, Theories, and Creativity in Science: The authors consider the form of creativity that is constituted by a metaphorMetaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
and by equating two different kinds of things, based on an act of perception of a similarity. They emphasize the role of communication and art as part of creativity, citing the example of Helen Keller
Helen Keller
Helen Adams Keller was an American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree....
who, through communication with her mentor Anne Sullivan
Anne Sullivan
Johanna "Anne" Mansfield Sullivan Macy , also known as Annie Sullivan, was an American teacher best known as the instructor and companion of Helen Keller.-Early life:Sullivan was born on April 14, 1866 in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts...
was led to understanding a similarity among the sensations of water and the symbolic gesture pressed into her palm which represented it.
2 Science as Creative Perception–Communication: The authors build upon the aspect of communication by discussing science as a social activity and the role of language in science, discussing in particular also the examples of the various interpretations of quantum mechanics, including the objections raised against the causal interpretation of quantum mechanics. They point out that its mathematical basis is open to a range of modifications which extend “beyond current quantum theory”, for instance concerning the role of trajectories.
3 What is Order?: The notion is introduced that all processes take place in an order
Order
-Ordinality:*Collation, the sequencing and ordering of text**Alphabetical order**Lexicographical order*Order of precedence-Philosophy:* Natural order * Implicate and explicate order according to David Bohm-Science and mathematics:...
, with the particular order depending on context. They distinguish orders of first, second and higher degrees, and interpret randomness
Randomness
Randomness has somewhat differing meanings as used in various fields. It also has common meanings which are connected to the notion of predictability of events....
as an order of infinite degree. At the same time, the degree itself depends on the context, and on what is known and taken into consideration concerning the underlying processes. Bohm and Peat further propose to a spectrum of order, with causal laws and statistical laws representing limiting cases of a more general range of possibilities.
4 The Generate Order and the Implicate Order: This chapter introduces the notions of generative order and implicate order, citing examples from, among others, mathematics (fractal
Fractal
A fractal has been defined as "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is a reduced-size copy of the whole," a property called self-similarity...
order as proposed by Benoit Mandelbrot
Benoît Mandelbrot
Benoît B. Mandelbrot was a French American mathematician. Born in Poland, he moved to France with his family when he was a child...
, Fourier series
Fourier series
In mathematics, a Fourier series decomposes periodic functions or periodic signals into the sum of a set of simple oscillating functions, namely sines and cosines...
, and touching upon Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...
's notion of an Urpflanze and the morphology of plants
Metamorphosis of Plants
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the great German poet and philosopher published in 1790 the seminal essay Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären, known in English as Metamorphosis of Plants. In this work, Goethe essentially discovered the homologous nature of leaf organs in plants, from...
) art (from schemata changing from Renaissance painting to the vortex-like order of J. M. W. Turner
J. M. W. Turner
Joseph Mallord William Turner RA was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting...
to the use of light by Claude Monet
Claude Monet
Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...
and the exploration of composition and structure by Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...
), science (holography, the Green's function
Green's function
In mathematics, a Green's function is a type of function used to solve inhomogeneous differential equations subject to specific initial conditions or boundary conditions...
and its relation to Feynman diagram
Feynman diagram
Feynman diagrams are a pictorial representation scheme for the mathematical expressions governing the behavior of subatomic particles, first developed by the Nobel Prize-winning American physicist Richard Feynman, and first introduced in 1948...
s and the Huygens principle, as well as Bohm's implicit order
Implicit order
Implicit order describes the state of a system when certain information or characteristics are present but not apparent through direct inspection....
, superimplicate order and holomovement
Holomovement
The holomovement is a key concept in David Bohm's interpretation of quantum mechanics and for his overall wordview. It brings together the holistic principle of "undivided wholeness" with the idea that everything is in a state of process or becoming...
in an infinite extension). The implicate and generative orders are emphasized as ground for all experience
Experience
Experience as a general concept comprises knowledge of or skill in or observation of some thing or some event gained through involvement in or exposure to that thing or event....
, accessible to direct experience by perception of well-defined forms, for instance reverberations of earlier notes in music, or the viewing of a scene of a film as a whole, or various resonances of words and images in poetry. Explicate orders, in contrast, are emphasized by society in so far as they are considered absolutely necessary for its survival, and suitable for large-scale organization and technology.
5 Generative Order in Science, Society, and Consciousness: These considerations are carried further, citing among others the works of Conrad Hal Waddington
Conrad Hal Waddington
Conrad Hal Waddington CBE FRS FRSE was a developmental biologist, paleontologist, geneticist, embryologist and philosopher who laid the foundations for systems biology...
, Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation....
, Brian Goodwin
Brian Goodwin
Brian Carey Goodwin was a Canadian mathematician and biologist, a Professor Emeritus at the Open University and a key founder of the field of theoretical biology.He made key contributions to the foundations of biomathematics, complex systems and generative models in developmental biology...
and Rupert Sheldrake
Rupert Sheldrake
Rupert Sheldrake is an English scientist. He is known for having proposed an unorthodox account of morphogenesis and for his research into parapsychology. His books and papers stem from his theory of morphic resonance, and cover topics such as animal and plant development and behaviour, memory,...
towards a generative order that lies beyond both Lamarckism
Lamarckism
Lamarckism is the idea that an organism can pass on characteristics that it acquired during its lifetime to its offspring . It is named after the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck , who incorporated the action of soft inheritance into his evolutionary theories...
and Darwinism
Darwinism
Darwinism is a set of movements and concepts related to ideas of transmutation of species or of evolution, including some ideas with no connection to the work of Charles Darwin....
. This chapter further provides a view of the role of human creativity
Creativity
Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new that has some kind of value. What counts as "new" may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs...
, when attention is allowed to move freely, for putting forth “new sensory orders and structures that form into new perceptions”.
6 Creativity in the Whole of Life: The individual, cosmic and social dimensions are considered. It is held that creativity blockages can be overcome and that “ ‘loosening’ rigidly held intellectual content in the tacit infrastructure of consciousness” plays a main role for awakening creative intelligence.
7 The Order Between and Beyond: Examples of the development of various orders are provided. To solve problems faced by society, there is need to find not merely “orders in between” (as a form of compromise between other orders) but rather to creatively extend to richer “orders beyond” which encompass different orders together in another form. Creativity thus contributes, so the authors, to make it possible to “move towards a new consciousness”.
Reception
The book has been cited in the fields of educationEducation
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
and science education
Science education
Science education is the field concerned with sharing science content and process with individuals not traditionally considered part of the scientific community. The target individuals may be children, college students, or adults within the general public. The field of science education comprises...
, and knowledge management
Knowledge management
Knowledge management comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences...
, among many others. Referencing this book, in the framework of his concept of a Total human ecosystem
Total Human Ecosystem
- History of the concept :Naveh and Lieberman and Naveh proposed the holistic, eco-centric concept of the Total Human Ecosystem in order to study the anthropocene ecology and improve land use planning and environmental management, within an integrated and interdisciplinary approach...
, Zev Naveh has also referred to implicate orders as “very important” for multifunctional landscapes in landscape ecology
Landscape ecology
Landscape ecology is the science of studying and improving relationships between urban development and ecological processes in the environment and particular ecosystems...
.