David Peat

140 From Certainty to Uncertaintyan electrical probe was introduced. It was as if they were living organisms,he thought. At the same time that he was puzzling over theirbehavior, he was thinking about the future of American society. Heknew that America was founded on a strong sense of individualismand personal freedom, but he was also concerned about how the goodof the collective could be maintained. Did people have to sacrifice theirindividual freedom for the good of the whole? How was it possible tohave free individuals and at the same time put the good of society first?David Bohm realized that the two systems—the plasma and humansociety—illuminated each other. In physics he could treat theplasma in two mathematical ways. In one, he dealt with an undisciplinedcrowd of individual electrons. In the other he treated the plasmaas a single entity, a sort of vibrating cloud. As Bohm studied the problemhe discovered that, mathematically speaking, each of these descriptionsis enfolded within the other. The collective behavior of the vibratingcloud unfolds out of the individual motion of the freeelectrons. Likewise, individual motion unfolds out of collective vibrations.But this mutual unfolding introduces a subtly different slant onthe nature of individuality. The electrical charges on electrons causethem to affect each other at long distances. But the collective aspect—the vibrating plasma cloud—modifies or shields out the long-rangeelectrical forces that operate between individual electrons. The result isthat, within the ambience of the plasma, individual electrons act as ifthey only experience electrical forces when other electrons are veryclose to them. Because each individual electron contributes to thewhole plasma these individual electrons are ever freer.Bohm concluded that hidden within the apparently chaotic motionof individual electrons could be found the collective vibrations ofthe whole plasma. Conversely, concealed within the vibrations of theplasma are the motions of free electrons. Likewise, within a humansociety each individual makes free choices that in some small way maychange the course of that society. Conversely, the choices we make areinfluenced by the meanings we find in life, and very often these meaningsare the product of the society in which we live. Thus the freedomof individual choice is enfolded within the whole of society, and themeaning of that society can be discovered within each individual.