Three philosophers who emphasize process will be considered here: Whitehead, Heidegger and Bohm — but not in historical order. Bohm is taken up first. Bohm offers something new to ontology — “enfolded,” “implicated,” interpenetrated orders which are superpositions, as in a hologram. The process thought of Whitehead and Heidegger come into easier focus in the light of Bohm’s formulation.
Whitehead’s process philosophy is considered after Bohm’s and is seen to have significant overlaps. Whitehead connects his philosophy to physics more through the theory of relativity than quantum theory. (Quantum theory was in early development in Whitehead’s day.) Bohm’s physics is more in the spirit of Einstein than that of the Copenhagenists — Bohr, Heisenberg & company — which makes the interface with Whitehead more natural. Finally Heidegger will also be seen to engage in process philosophy, though displaced radically from the tradition of science and mathematics with which Bohm and Whitehead are closely identified. Heidegger calls his version of process das Ereignis and proposes a dynamics of great ontological power. Heidegger (CP) has a distinct antipathy toward science — he would “leave it to its mania for its own usefulness” (CP 198) — but as Pylkkö (1998) points out, Heidegger was not much acquainted with the revolution of quantum theory and so could not see its potential relevance to his thinking. Nor did Heidegger care about Dasein’s brain. (Chapter 3, Process philosophies, p. 49)
Bohm’s fundamental dynamic is called the “holomovement” (Bohm 1980, 1986, 1987. 1990; Bohm & Hiley 1993). The holomovement is “holonomic” (under the law of the whole). What “is” is holomovement, but “is” must be carefully reinter- preted: it lacks any connotation of Being, presence, perceivability, worldliness, indeed any distinction. The holomovement is pre-difference, pre-world, pre-space- time. We might only say of holomovement, in the manner of the Vedas, “Neti. Neti.” Not this, not that, not something else ... not even no-thing (which presumes an objectuality to negate). To counteract the overwhelming sense of Being implied by ‘is’ — a word that English does not allow us to avoid for long — it could be writ- ten ‘is-X’, using ‘is’ sous rature, as Derrida put it, “under erasure,” using the term and then crossing it out. (p. 50)
There are two primary phases of this holodynamics according to Bohm: implication and explication. Both phases are continuous and operate simultaneously rather than consecutively. Implication （翕）is the “enfolding” of world to the whole and explication （闢）is the cotemporaneous “unfolding” of world from the whole. Each moment of unfolding/enfolding has a brief duration. (On the “moment” see 5.7.) Bohm’s unfoldment is akin to Whitehead’s “creative advance” (3.3.2). It seems certain to us in living our quotidian lives that the world subsists autonomously (“the earth abides”) but Bohm steadfastly denies it. He thinks the world is continuously upheld in the movement of explication. The world is explicate order continually unfolded from implicate order, rather than explicate order persisting. Thus for Bohm the particle does not follow a continuous trajectory (seemingly implied by its visible trail in a Wilson cloud chamber) but the particle is unfolded from the whole at one instant and re-enfolded in the next, while simultaneous with this re- enfolding a particle is unfolded from the whole. The seeming continuity of world is accordingly an illusion according to Bohm. The world is instead continually and consecutively unfolded in the dynamics of the holomovement, a world hoisted1 in the dynamics. Bohm leaves no stasis; he presumes no subsistence in his thoroughly organic philosophy.
Bohm’s theory of the holomovement is a “double aspect” theory in the tradition of Spinoza. (p. 50)
In the universal flux of implication and explication,
mind and matter are not separate substances. Rather, they are different aspects of one whole and unbroken movement. (Bohm 1980, p.11, ital. added)
These different processes are at dynamical parity yet ontologically one aspect is primary and the other quite secondary. That is, implication and explication are dynamically cotemporaneous according to Bohm but the implicate order is more primary to the dynamics than the explicate. (p. 51)
