Umbrella metaphor

 Here’s a clean comparison table of Bohm’s Explicate vs Implicate Order:

Developed by David Bohm in

Wholeness and the Implicate Order

🌀 Explicate Order vs Implicate Order

Feature	Explicate Order	Implicate Order
Meaning	“Unfolded” order	“Enfolded” order
Reality Type	Surface appearance	Deeper underlying reality
Objects	Separate, distinct things	Undivided whole
Space	Objects located in space	Space emerges from deeper structure
Time	Sequential, linear	Possibly non-sequential
Locality	Local interactions	Fundamentally nonlocal
Fragmentation	Appears fragmented	No real fragmentation
Physics Level	Classical world, observable phenomena	Quantum level, underlying field
Analogy	Visible image	Hologram plate encoding whole image
Determinism	Depends on interpretation	Compatible with Bohm’s deterministic theory

🧠 Simple Intuition

• Explicate order = what we normally experience: separate things in space and time.
• Implicate order = everything is internally related; separateness is an appearance.

🌊 Bohm’s Favorite Analogy

Imagine ink dropped into glycerin:

• When stirred, it seems dispersed (explicate appearance).
• But by reversing the motion, the drop reforms — showing hidden order (implicate).

This illustrates:

What looks dispersed may actually be enfolded.

⚛ In Quantum Terms

• The wavefunction reflects implicate order.
• The particle positions we observe belong to explicate order.
• The quantum potential connects distant particles nonlocally.

🧩 One-Sentence Contrast

Explicate order is the world of separate things; implicate order is the deeper unity from which those things unfold.

If you want, I can next show:

• A diagram-style explanation
• Mathematical mapping to Bohmian mechanics
• Relation to entanglement
• Connection to consciousness
• Criticisms from mainstream physicists