Bohm’s Philosophy of Nature

1. Bohm’s Philosophy of Nature David Bohm, Causality and Chance in Modern Physics (New York, 1957). From Feyerabend, P. K. Prepared By Jacques E. ZOO

2. Bohm’s Philosophy of Nature • Nature is about the World we live in • and about ideas developed for understanding this world • It is often assumed-and the basic philosophy of many contemporary physicists supports this assumption • that within sciences speculation and ingenuity can not play a very great role as By: Respickius

3. Bohm’s Philosophy of Nature • physical theories are more or less uniquely by the facts • Bohm in his book shows that this is not correct, and that • today there exists a clash of ideas about fundamental things • the imposing and perhaps a little terrifying picture of science as a unalterable and steadily increasing collection of facts is nothing but a myth By: Respickius

4. Bohm’s Philosophy of Nature • ingenuity and speculation play in physics as great a role as anywhere else • Bohm says, the separation between sciences and humanities is due to false picture, if not a caricature of science • It is this false picture which is attacked throughout his book By: Respickius

5. Bohm’s Philosophy of Nature • The book explicitly refutes the idea that complementarity, and only complementarity alone, solves all the ontological and conceptual problems of Microphysics • Bohm discusses and criticizes the validity of induction and empirical generalizations and of universal theories By: Respickius

6. Bohm’s Philosophy of Nature • Two interpretations of complementarity • as an attempt to provide an intuitive picture for an existing theory, and • as a heuristic principle guiding future research • One of the basic assumptions of Orthodox is that: • in our descriptions of nature the purpose is to trace down, as far as it is possible By: Respickius

7. Bohm’s Philosophy of Nature relations between the manifold aspects of our experience • For them the facts of experience play the role of building stones out of which a theory may be constructed, but • which themselves neither can, nor should be modified • The reasonable assumption is that our ideas, and our experiences may be By: Respickius

8. Bohm’s Philosophy of Nature erroneous and that the latter gives at most an approximate account of what is going on in reality • Cosmological generalization is that: • the world contains infinitely many levels • each level is characterized by a set of laws which may be causal or probabilistic, or both By: Respickius

9. Bohm’s Philosophy of Nature • In either case, • each law inevitably has its errors, and these are just • as necessary a part of its true significance as are those of its consequences that are correct • Every scientific description is true within a certain domain of validity • The assertion of the absolute validity of By: Respickius

10. Bohm’s Philosophy of Nature a physical principle implies the denial of any theory that contains its negation • Scientific research does not, and can not lead to a knowledge of nature that is completely free from errors • The errors referred to could be either subjective or objective, or both depending on the complex behavior of nature By: Respickius

11. Bohm’s Philosophy of Nature • Nature is such that no law can ever be universally valid, hence • it is sound scientific method to restrict the laws we find to a certain domain • it is unsound method to apply them outside this domain, and never • should we proclaim a certain law as universally valid, i.e. as valid in all domains of experimentation, and under all possible conditions By: Respickius

12. Bohm’s Philosophy of Nature • If we are careful enough in our pronouncements about the applicability of a scientific theory, and if we always restrict it to its proper domain, • We do not run into the risk of being refuted by new discoveries • More specifically, the assumption that Newton’s laws are universally valid has implications from the unlimited science By: Respickius

13. Bohm’s Philosophy of Nature • Bohm defines two basic cosmological principles of nature, namely: • The principle of infinity of nature, and • The principle that there exist complexes which are relatively stable over a certain period of time which allow for the description, in terms of finite laws and concepts of parts of nature • Cosmology describes basic structure of our world By: Respickius

14. Bohm’s Philosophy of Nature • The two principles by Bohm are not even empirical, or scientific • They represent absolute truth, and are based on experience, and • They are not defined within a certain domain of validity • they are not capable of improvement by taking into account errors By: Respickius

15. Bohm’s Philosophy of Nature • The conditioned validity of the law and its approximative character are thus wholly dependent upon the objective existence of such other domains • Lack of domains outside the domain of its applicability, leads to a statement about the infiniteness of matter in becoming unconditionally and absolutely valid By: Respickius

16. Bohm’s Philosophy of Nature Conclusion: • It is quite impossible to entertain a point of view which has no reference to any facts whatever, and it is equally • Impossible to introduce a new moral system unless it is somewhat related to situations already existent By: Respickius

17. Bohm’s Philosophy of Nature Conclusion: • Every theory of the universe, whether mythological or scientific in content, possesses some degree of truth. By: Respickius

18. Bohm’s Philosophy of Nature End of my Presentation! & Thank you for listening! By: Respickius