Source: The Holographic Universe, HarperCollinsPublishers, Michael Talbot 1991.
A Remarkable View of Reality.wav
This podcast explores the fascinating idea that our brain and the universe might function based on holographic principles. It highlights the work of neuroscientist Karl Pribram and physicist David Bohm, who independently arrived at models suggesting reality, as we perceive it, is a construction or projection from a deeper, more fundamental order of interconnected wave forms. Pribram's research on memory and vision in the brain, particularly the way information seemed to be distributed rather than localized, led him to consider the holographic model as a potential explanation, especially its "whole in every part" property. Bohm, coming from quantum physics, saw the interconnectedness of subatomic particles and proposed a "holomovement," where our tangible world is the "explicate" or unfolded order of an underlying "implicate" or enfolded order of reality. Together, their theories suggest that our brains interpret wave patterns from this deeper domain to create the familiar reality we experience, challenging traditional notions of space, time, and the fundamental nature of existence.
1. Pribram's Holographic Model of the Brain: The source details neurosurgeon Karl Pribram's theory that the brain functions like a hologram. This idea originated from the puzzle of how and where memories are stored in the brain. The traditional view, supported by early research by Wilder Penfield who stimulated the brains of epileptics and elicited vivid, specific memories from their temporal lobes, held that memories were localized, or stored in specific locations, called engrams. However, Pribram's work with Karl Lashley and his own research challenged this. Lashley's experiments with rats involved training them to perform tasks and then surgically removing various portions of their brains. To his surprise, he found he could not eradicate the rats' memories, even with massive portions of the brain removed. Pribram observed similar results in humans who had parts of their brains removed or suffered head injuries; they experienced general haziness but not the loss of specific memories. Even stimulating the temporal lobes didn't consistently duplicate Penfield's findings in non-epileptic patients. These findings suggested that memories were not localized but distributed throughout the brain. Pribram discovered holography provided a mechanism for this distributed storage. Just as every piece of a holographic film contains the entire image, Pribram theorized that every part of the brain might contain all the information necessary to recall a whole memory.
2. The Nature and Properties of Holograms: A significant portion of the source is dedicated to explaining what holography is and how it works, as this concept is central to both Pribram's and Bohm's theories. Holography is made possible by the phenomenon of interference, which is the crisscrossing pattern created when waves (like light waves) ripple through each other. Holograms are typically produced using laser light, which is pure and coherent. A single laser beam is split; one part bounces off an object, and the other collides with the reflected light from the object, creating an interference pattern that is recorded on film. To the naked eye, this film doesn't look like the object but rather like irregular ripples. When another laser beam or bright light is shined through the film, a three-dimensional image of the original object appears. This image is so convincing you can walk around it, but it is a virtual image that you cannot touch. A remarkable property of holograms, unlike normal photographs, is that if the film is cut into pieces, each fragment, even a small one, still contains the entire image of the original object, although the image becomes hazier as the piece gets smaller. Holograms also possess a vast capacity for information storage; multiple images can be recorded on the same film by changing the angle of the lasers, and each image can be retrieved independently.
3. Bohm's Holographic Model of the Universe: The source details physicist David Bohm's theory that the entire universe is structured like a giant, flowing hologram. Bohm's ideas stemmed from his fascination with quantum physics, particularly the strange behavior of subatomic particles which can act as both particles and waves (quanta) and show evidence of interconnectedness. Bohm's work on plasmas and electrons in metals showed large groups of particles behaving as interconnected wholes, not just individuals. Dissatisfied with the standard quantum theory's inability to describe the world's basic structure and its assumption of completeness, Bohm proposed an alternative with a deeper, subquantum level. He introduced the concept of a quantum potential, a field pervading all of space whose influence doesn't diminish with distance. This potential implies a fundamental wholeness where the behavior of parts is organized by the whole, and location ceases to exist at this level (nonlocality). Bohm used analogies like a fish seen on two TV monitors to illustrate how seemingly separate entities could be connected at a deeper level. His core idea is the existence of the implicate (enfolded) order, a deeper, more primary level of reality underlying our explicate (unfolded) order, the tangible world we perceive. Our reality is like the image projected from a holographic film, constantly unfolding from and enfolding back into the implicate order (the holomovement).
4. Underlying Principles and Implications of the Holographic Paradigm: Both the holographic brain model and the holographic universe model share fundamental principles and have profound implications that challenge conventional scientific understanding. A key principle is that of distributed information and wholeness, where the whole is contained in every part. This is seen in the brain's ability to retain memories despite damage to specific areas and in the holographic film fragment containing the entire image. For Bohm, this extends to the entire cosmos, suggesting everything is part of an undivided whole, and our perception of separate "things" is an abstraction or fragmentation. The models also suggest reality is fundamentally based on frequencies and interference patterns, not just solid objects. Pribram's work showed brain cells responding to frequency translations of visual patterns (Fourier mathematics), and Bohm's universe is seen as a vast symphony of wave forms. The theories also touch on the nature of consciousness and its relationship to matter, suggesting consciousness is a subtle form of matter enfolded throughout the universe and that the observer and observed are not separate. The vast energy calculated to exist in empty space is seen by Bohm as evidence of the rich, hidden nature of the implicate order, suggesting space is a full plenum, not a vacuum, and matter is merely a pattern of excitation within this cosmic sea of energy. These ideas suggest that even concepts like space and time are constructed by our brains.
5. Experimental Support for the Holographic Models: The source highlights several experimental findings that lend support to the holographic brain and universe theories, although they remain controversial. For the brain, biologist Paul Pietsch's experiments with salamanders provided striking evidence for distributed memory; he cut, flipped, shuffled, and even minced their brains, yet their feeding behavior returned to normal when the brain was replaced. Neurophysiologists Russell and Karen DeValois found that brain cells in the visual cortex responded not to visual patterns themselves, but to the Fourier translations (wave form language) of those patterns, suggesting the brain processes visual information using the same mathematics employed in holography. Russian scientist Nikolai Bernstein's work in the 1930s showed that complex physical movements could be encoded and predicted using Fourier analysis, suggesting movements might also be stored in the brain as wave forms. For Bohm's universe theory, the most compelling evidence discussed is Alain Aspect and his colleagues' 1982 experiment. By measuring the angles of polarization of pairs of photons traveling in opposite directions faster than light could travel between them, they showed that the photons' properties were correlated, confirming nonlocality – the idea that particles can influence each other instantaneously regardless of the distance separating them. This finding supports the idea that reality is fundamentally interconnected at a deeper level, as proposed by Bohm's quantum potential and implicate order.
1. What is a hologram and what are its key properties?
A hologram is a three-dimensional image created by recording the interference patterns of light waves reflected from an object onto a photographic film. Unlike a traditional photograph, which only captures a two-dimensional image, a hologram encodes information about the object's depth and perspective.
Key properties include: