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The question of relevance comes before that of truth, because to ask whether a statement is true or false presupposes that it is relevant (so that to try to assert the truth or falsity of an irrelevant statement is a form of confusion).

David Bohm

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David Bohm
Age: 74 †
Born: 1917
Born: December 20
Died: 1992
Died: October 27
Nuclear Physicist
Philosopher
Physicist
University Teacher
Wilkes-Barre
Pennsylvania
David Joseph Bohm
Confusing
Asks
Irrelevant
Whether
Statement
Comes
Relevant
Irrelevance
Science
Statements
Falsity
True
Confusion
Presupposes
Form
False
Relevance
Truth
Assert
Trying
Question

More quotes by David Bohm

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In the long run, it is far more dangerous to adhere to illusion than to face what the actual fact is.
David Bohm
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Thought is constantly creating problems that way and then trying to solve them. But as it tries to solve them it makes it worse because it doesn't notice that it's creating them, and the more it thinks, the more problems it creates.
David Bohm
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Individuality is only possible if it unfolds from wholeness.
David Bohm
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We can't simply take the way things seem and just work on that, because that would be another kind of mistake thought makes-taking the surface and calling it the reality.
David Bohm
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In relativity, movement is continuous, causally determinate and well defined, while in quantum mechanics it is discontinuous, not causally determinate and not well defined.
David Bohm
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Space is not empty. It is full, a plenum as opposed to a vacuum, and is the ground for the existence of everything, including ourselves. The universe is not separate from this cosmic sea of energy.
David Bohm
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This kind of overall way of thinking is not only a fertile source of new theoretical ideas: it is needed for the human mind to function in a generally harmonious way, which could in turn help to make possible an orderly and stable society.
David Bohm
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Thus, in a dialogue each person does not attempt to make common certain ideas or items of information that are already known to him. Rather, it can be said that collectively they are making something in common
David Bohm
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Ego-centeredness is not individuality at all.
David Bohm
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The notion of a separate organism is clearly an abstraction, as is also its boundary. Underlying all this is unbroken wholeness even though our civilization has developed in such a way as to strongly emphasize the separation into parts.
David Bohm
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Can we learn to become more learning-oriented individually and collectively, rather than 'I know' oriented?
David Bohm
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Similarly, thought is a system. That system not only includes thought and feelings, but it includes the state of the body it includes the whole of society - as thought is passing back and forth between people in a process by which thought evolved from ancient times.
David Bohm
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Deep down the consciousness of mankind is one. This is a virtual certainty because even in the vacuum matter is one and if we don't see this, it's because we are blinding ourselves to it.
David Bohm
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If each one of us can give full attention to what is actually ‘blocking’ communication while he is also attending properly to the content of what is communicated, then we may be able to create something new between us, something of very great significance for bringing to an end the at present insoluble problems of the individual and of society.
David Bohm
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We have the idea that after we have been thinking something, it just evaporates. But thinking doesn't disappear. It goes somehow into the brain and leaves something-a trace-which becomes thought. And thought then acts automatically.
David Bohm
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Thought is creating divisions out of itself and then saying that they are there naturally.
David Bohm
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A new kind of mind thus beings to come into being which is based on the development of a common meaning that is constantly transforming in the process of the dialogue.
David Bohm
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My suggestion is that at each state the proper order of operation of the mind requires an overall grasp of what is generally known, not only in formal logical, mathematical terms, but also intuitively, in images, feelings, poetic usage of language, etc.
David Bohm
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One thus sees that a new kind of theory is needed which drops these basic commitments and at most recovers some essential features of the older theories as abstract forms derived from a deeper reality in which what prevails in unbroken wholeness.
David Bohm
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But the way people commonly use the word nowadays it means something all of whose parts are mutually interdependent - not only for their mutual action, but for their meaning and for their existence.
David Bohm