The Holographic Universe |  | Author: Michael Talbot
Publisher: Harper Perennial
List Price: $14.99
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Rating:  244 reviews
Sales Rank: 6767
Media: Paperback
Edition: First Edition
Pages: 338
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 0060922583
Dewey Decimal Number: 530
EAN: 9780060922580
ASIN: 0060922583
Publication Date: May 6, 1992
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Today nearly everyone is familiar with holograms, three-dimensional images projected into space with the aid of a laser. Now, two of the world's most eminent thinkers -- University of London physicists David Bohm, a former protege of Einstein's and one of the world's most respected quantum physicists, and Stanford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram, one of the architects of our modern understanding of the brain -- believe that the universe itself may be a giant hologram, quite literally a kind of image or construct created, at least in part, by the human mind. This remarkable new way of looking at the universe explains now only many of the unsolved puzzles of physics, but also such mysterious occurrences as telepathy, out-of-body and near death experiences, "lucid" dreams, and even religious and mystical experiences such as feelings of cosmic unity and miraculous healings.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 244
 The Holographic Universe November 15, 2009
A. Keane
I found this book full of interesting facts which helped to open my mind to the possibilities of the world of energy healing. It was well put together and easy to understand. I look at the human being, all beings in a very different way now.
 I enjoyed the first part of the book... November 5, 2009
Sunny T (Richmond VA)
... about David Bohm's work, in particular, and the principles of holography. It was well-researched and well-written. This is the book I thought I was buying. But Mr. Talbot jumps off the scientific track and The Holographic Universe becomes another book entirely, devoted to placebos, psychic healings, auras, hypnosis, psychokinesis, poltergeists, and more paranormal phenomena. I stopped reading just short of the OOBE and UFO abduction sections. I flipped through the remainder of the book hoping to see more about holography. I was disappointed. I handed the book to a friend who wanted to read it and told him he could keep it.
 Cool Book October 24, 2009
Amanda MacPherson
The most interesting book I've read in ages. In fact I'm going to dig it out and read it again;)
A Paradigm Shifting Book October 15, 2009
Athena
If you liked the films "Mind Walk", and "What the Bleep..." and are interested in the spiritual repercussions of the latest findings in quantum physics, and Unified Field Theory then you will probably love this book too. If you are unfamiliar with these concepts know that although not religious, this book explores some recent discoveries made by science that may have seemingly spiritual repercussions. Talbot elegantly explains the very intriguing Holographic Theory coined by Bohm. It's a theory that the universe, our memories, even our senses are based on the idea that fractales exist in our lives that are similar to a hologram.
A true hologram looks like a series of squiggles and lines. You need to shine a laser through it to produce a 3-D image. Imagine the image is of an apple. Even if you cut the hologram into pieces, and shine a laser through, the image of the apple is visible and intact. The smaller the holographic piece, the fuzzier the image becomes, but it still creates the entire image, not a portion of it.
There are several other examples of this principal throughout the book as applied to other fractales in nature. Similarly, if you remove 1/8 of the brain, you don't remove 1/8 of a memory, the whole memory simply becomes fuzzier, but you still remember the whole experience. A holographic image emerges from the seemingly chaotic patterns of interference in wave patterns, yet when a laser is shone through an image appears. The brain appears to be organized on the same principal of criss-cross patterns as well. One chapter provides additional examples to suggest that there are several chaotic patterns in nature that when studied closer, actually have an exceptionally high order. This suggests a more infinite order to the universe than previously realized. There are several examples of mathematics and quantum physics in this book that are used to explain this theory more clearly.
Despite the fact that I am more oriented toward the arts, linguistics, and biology, I found this book to clearly explain some very paradigm shifting concepts. This is one of those pieces that I had to own so that I can refer to it throughout my life as well as reccommend to friends, because it is hard to see the world the same after considering the concepts within.
Probable about important matters... August 25, 2009
rowley32256 (Jacksonville USA)
The late Michael Talbot was fascinated by the findings in 1982 at the University of Paris that "under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart."
David Bohm, a brilliant physicist, flew in the face of conventional science by suggesting that reality might be more than the material or "explicate order" extending to other realms that he called the "implicate order." Karl Pribram, a neurophysiologist, hypothesized that in the brain, "memories are encoded not in neurons, or small groupings of neurons, but in patterns of nerve impulses that crisscross the entire brain in the same way that patterns of laser light interference crisscross the entire area of a piece of film containing a holographic image. In other words, Pribram believes the brain is itself a hologram." Talbot combines the ideas of Bohm and Pribram (both of whom are credited in the book as having been "generous with both their time and their ideas) to show how the entire universe could be a hologram, or more correctly, multiple holograms, arising out of consciousness. He delves into neuroscience, citing the fact that responses are initiated in the body before the sensory perception that triggered them has been consciously processed as indicating that (1) the brain may be filtering and altering the inputs and (2) our subconscious may be taking decisions for us.
Talbot effectively shows how such a holographic universe could explain, not only phenomena from the quantum world, but also spirituality and many paranormal phenomena including: near-death experiences (NDE); out-of-body experiences (OBE); miracles; clairvoyance; psychokinesis; and so on. The many examples of such phenomena that Talbot cites are fascinating in themselves, but it is the way in which they can be reconciled with the Bohm-Primram idea that really sets the book apart. Of course, when anyone ventures to give examples of paranormal phenomena, someone will point to the fact that a particular one has subsequently been shown to be in doubt - especially as here where almost 20 years have elapsed since the book was written. The more remarkable thing is that despite that lapse of time, most of the examples quoted by Talbot remain unexplained by natural causes.
Science typically does not take an interest in the paranormal, which is resistant to the scientific method of repeated experimentation to provide physical evidence. But as Talbot accurately states: "when vast numbers of people start reporting the same experiences, their anecdotal accounts should also be viewed as important evidence. They should not be dismissed merely because they cannot be documented as rigorously as other and often less significant features of the same phenomenon can be documented ... science must replace its enamorment with objectivity - the idea that the best way to study nature is to be detached, analytical, and dispassionately objective - with a more participatory approach." I would only take exception here to the word "replace" and say that science can continue perfectly well in its own milieu provided that we also investigate the rest of reality. This is an important book; an excellent read but also food for thought. I'd also recommend books by Irvin Laszlo to anyone who finds this one as fascinating as I did.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 244
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