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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
Trying
Question
Assert
Asks
Confusing
Whether
Irrelevant
Comes
Statement
Science
Relevant
Irrelevance
True
Statements
Falsity
Form
Confusion
Presupposes
Truth
False
Relevance

More quotes by David Bohm

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The ability to perceive or think differently is more important than the knowledge gained.
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Individuality is only possible if it unfolds from wholeness.
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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.
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The system [of thought] doesn't stay with the difficult problem that produces unpleasant feelings. It's conditioned somehow to move as fast as it can toward more pleasant feelings, without actually facing the thing that's making the unpleasant feeling.
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Consciousness is much more of the implicate order than is matter... Yet at a deeper level [matter and consciousness] are actually inseparable and interwoven, just as in the computer game the player and the screen are united by participation.
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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.
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Ego-centeredness is not individuality at all.
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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.
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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.
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Ultimately, all moments are really one, therefore now is an eternity.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Perhaps there is more sense in our nonsense and more nonsense in our 'sense' than we would care to believe.
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We could say that practically all the problems of the human race are due to the fact that thought is not proprioceptive.
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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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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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
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A corporation is organized as a system - it has this department, that department, that department... they don't have any meaning separately they only can function together. And also the body is a system. Society is a system in some sense. And so on.
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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