Bohm-Biederman Correspondence

by David Bohm, Charles Joseph Biederman, Paavo T I Pylkkanen (Editor)

"It was sheer chance that I encountered David Bohm's writing in 1958 . . . I knew nothing about him. What struck me about his work and prompted my initial letter was his underlying effort to seek for some larger sense of reality, which seemed a very humanized search. This was further evidenced as our correspondence progressed, and he made the effort to communicate with me beyond the private language of physicists." --Charles Biederman

In March of 1960, the artist Charles Biederman wrote a one page, spontaneous letter to David Bohm, the first of over four thousand pages of correspondence that ended in 1969. This first volume of the Bohm-Biederman Correspondence, including letters between 1960 and 1962, is a cultural document which traces the fascinating exchange between art and science, creativity and theory, a great physicist and an extraordinary artist.

One of the most important factors that triggered such intense correspondence between the two men was their shared interest in the natural world. Approaching nature from different angles, the perspectives of art and science meant that they complemented and in this sense needed each other in order to obtain a fuller understanding. The two men also felt a dissatisfaction with the dominant trends their fields. They shared the idea that both in art and in physics, traditional views of nature had become inadequate in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and the mainstream had failed to respond adequately to new situations.

These letters give readers a rare opportunity to engage in a remarkable transatlantic intellectual discussion between the prestigious physicist and a great artist.

Genres: Science, Art, Philosophy

288 pages, ebook

First published December 3, 1998

About the author

David Joseph Bohm (December 20, 1917 – October 27, 1992) was an American scientist who has been described as one of the most significant theoretical physicists of the 20th century and who contributed innovative and unorthodox ideas to quantum theory, neuropsychology and the philosophy of mind.