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'''Implicate order''' and '''explicate order''' are [[Ontology|ontological]] concepts for [[Quantum mechanics|quantum theory]] coined by [[Theoretical physics|theoretical physicist]] [[David Bohm]] during the early 1980s. They are used to describe two different frameworks for understanding the same phenomenon or aspect of reality. In particular, the concepts were developed in order to explain the bizarre behavior of [[subatomic particle]]s –which behavior[[quantum difficultphysics]] struggles to explain. by quantum physics.
In his bookBohm's ''[[Wholeness and the Implicate Order]]'', Bohmhe usesused these notions to describe how the sameappearance of such phenomenon might lookappear differentdifferently, or might be characterized by, differentvarying principal factors, independing differenton contexts such as at different scales.<ref name="wholeness">David Bohm: ''Wholeness and the Implicate Order'', Routledge, 1980 ({{ISBN|0-203-99515-5}}).</ref> The implicate (also referred to as the "enfolded") order is seen as a deeper and more fundamental order of reality. In contrast, the explicate or "unfolded" order include the abstractions that humans normally perceive. As he writes:wrote,
:In the enfolded [or implicate] order, [[space]] and [[time]] are no longer the dominant factors determining the relationships of dependence or independence of different elements. Rather, an entirely different sort of basic connection of elements is possible, from which our ordinary notions of space and time, along with those of separately existent material particles, are abstracted as forms derived from the deeper order. These ordinary notions in fact appear in what is called the "explicate" or "unfolded" order, which is a special and distinguished form contained within the general totality of all the implicate orders ({{harvnb|Bohm|1980|p=xv}}).
== Overview ==
=== The implicate order as an algebra ===
David Bohm, his co-worker [[Basil Hiley]], and other physicists of [[Birkbeck College]] worked toward a model of quantum physics in which the implicate order is represented in the form of an appropriate [[algebra]] or other [[Pregeometry (physics)|pregeometry]]. They considered [[spacetime]] itself as part of an explicate order that is connected to an implicate order that they called ''pre-space.'' The [[spacetime manifold]] and the properties of [[Principle of locality|locality]] and [[Nonlocal Aharonov–Bohm effect|nonlocality]] all arise from an order in such pre-space. A. M. Frescura and Hiley suggested that an implicate order could be carried by an algebra, with the explicate order being contained in the various [[Algebra representation|representations]] of this algebra.<ref>F. A. M. Frescura, B. J. Hiley: [http://www.bbk.ac.uk/tpru/BasilHiley/P12FrescandHiley3.pdf Algebras, quantum theory and pre-space], pp. 3–4 (published in Revista Brasileira de Fisica, Volume Especial, Julho 1984, Os 70 anos de Mario Schonberg, pp. 49–86)</ref> (''See also:'' [[Basil Hiley#Implicate orders, pre-space and algebraic structures|Work by Bohm and Hiley on implicate orders, pre-space and algebraic structures]].)
In analogy to [[Alfred North Whitehead]]'s notion of '"actual occasion'"<ref>A. N. Whitehead, <i>Process and Reality</i>, Corrected Edition, ed. D. Griffin and D. Sherburne (New York: Macmillan, 1978), pp. 18 ff.</ref>,Bohm considered the notion of ''moment''–a moment being a not entirely localizable event, with events being allowed to overlap <ref>David Bohm: ''Time, the implicate order, and pre-space,'' In: David R. Griffin: ''Physics and the Ultimate Significance of Time'', State University of New York Press, 1986, {{ISBN|0-88706-113-3}}, pp. 177–208, [https://books.google.com/books?id=hXWKzPFgv_wC&pg=PA183 p. 183]</ref> and being connected in an over-all implicate order:<ref>David Bohm: ''Time, the implicate order, and pre-space'', In: David R. Griffin: ''Physics and the Ultimate Significance of Time'', State University of New York Press, 1986, {{ISBN|0-88706-113-3}}, pp. 177–208, [https://books.google.com/books?id=hXWKzPFgv_wC&pg=PA189 p. 189]</ref>
{{"| I propose that each moment of time is a projection from the total implicate order. The term ''projection'' is a particularly happy choice here, not only because its common meaning is suitable for what is needed, but also because its mathematical meaning as a projection operation, ''P'', is just what is required for working out these notions in terms of the quantum theory. }}
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