“That Inscrutable Thing”: Holography, Nonlocality, and Identity in American Romanticism

Recent decades have seen a surge in interdisciplinary scholarship into the relationship between Emerson and science. The majority of these works illuminate Emerson’s indebtedness to science so to dispel the haze of mysticism surrounding his Transcendentalism. Resultantly, such studies have expelled direct treatment of Emerson’s primary concern—holistic oneness—for lack of any new or scientifically sound way to engage or understand this seemingly mystical notion. This essay introduces an interdisciplinary theory informed by the science of quantum nonlocality and optical holography, David Bohm’s holomovement theory that allows for new, more comprehensive ways to reconsider the reality of oneness; then reincorporates Emerson’s central concern back into the contemporary humanities-science scholarly field. Thereafter the essay applies Transcendental-holomovement concepts to a reading of Whitman and Emerson to demonstrate the ways in which to use these findings toward new interdisciplinary understandings of American Romanticism.