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

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Yet, in spite of this world-wide system of linkages, there is, at this very moment, a general feeling that communication is breaking down everywhere, on an unparalleled scale.
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Thought is creating divisions out of itself and then saying that they are there naturally.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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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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...consciousness is a coherent whole, which is never static or complete, but which is in an unending process of movement and unfoldment.
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From the outset, however, this whole controversy has been plagued by tacit assumptions, very often of a philosophical rather than a physical character.
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Can we learn to become more learning-oriented individually and collectively, rather than 'I know' oriented?
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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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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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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.
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Individuality is only possible if it unfolds from wholeness.
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The ability to perceive or think differently is more important than the knowledge gained.
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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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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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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.
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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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