Jill Harrison

“We could say that practically all the problems of the human race are due to the fact that thought is not proprioceptive.”
― David Bohm, On Dialogue (Routledge Classics)

“We will never come to truth unless the overall meaning is coherent,” he says. Out of creating a larger field of more coherent shared meaning, truly new and penetrating understandings may emerge, often unexpectedly. “Truth does not emerge from opinions,” says Bohm, “it must emerge from something else – perhaps from a freer movement of this tacit mind.” He continues, “we have to get meanings coherent if we are to perceive truth, or to take part in truth.” This odd phrase, “take part in truth,” points to, what seems to me, Bohm’s second foundational idea: what it means to understand wholes. Reductionist science has great power in understanding isolated things, and in applying this knowledge to create new things like new technologies. But its efficacy hinges on its being able to fragment or isolate its subject matter. It fails and may become actively dysfunctional when confronted by wholes, by the need to understand and take effective action in a highly interdependent context. This is why the modern world is full of increasingly stunning technological advances and an increasing inability to live together.”
― David Bohm, On Dialogue (Routledge Classics)

“Thought defends its basic assumptions against evidence that they may be wrong.”
― David Bohm, On Dialogue (Routledge Classics)