A truly deep connectivity

One hundred and fifty years ago, William Blake began his Auguries of Innocence with the lines: To see a world in a grain of sand,/ And a heaven in a wild flower,/ Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,/ And eternity in an hour. The lyrical transcendence of the imagery of course is unparalleled, but can the words mean anything beyond the metaphorical use of language? Seeing the world in a grain of sand is after all only poetry; it can hardly relate to something tangible. Or did Blake have some kind of deeper insight?

It seems now that he probably did — especially after the development of holography in 1947 and the convergent thought processes and theories the invention spawned among scientists including theoretical physicist David Bohm and neurophysiologist Karl Pribram. Working separately in unrelated fields, the two researchers independently advanced similar hypotheses which challenge some very basic notions science has held about the nature of reality.