The Brazilian American scientist David Bohm was described as one of the most significant 20th theoretical physicists best known for propounding the implicate and explicate order.
Bohm made a great contribution to the world of science, specifically Physics. He authored several books (like 'Wholeness And Implicate Order') relating to quantum science and other aspects of science.
Although David died in 1992 at age 74, some of his quotes are still relatable and in use even in our generation. Bohm's thoughts, researches, and other works (some of which are controversial) have served as a gateway for further research, thoughts, and works for other scientists.
This article contains a compiled list of David Bohm quotes from the famous scientist.
Thought-Provoking David Bohm Quotes
During his lifetime, David Bohm made some statements, some of which will live rent-free in the hearts of people. Some of these are still being said and used in several scenarios and case studies. Below is a compiled list of some thought-provoking quotes from David Bohm.
"Perhaps there is more sense in our nonsense and more nonsense in our 'sense' than we would care to believe."
"In the long run it is far more dangerous to adhere to illusion than to face what the actual fact is."
"We can refer to this one process as experience-knowledge (the hyphen indicating that these are two inseparable aspects of one whole movement)."
"As time passes, unsolved problems within a given paradigm tend to accumulate and to lead to ever-increasing confusion and conflict."
"Suppose we were able to share meanings freely without a compulsive urge to impose our view or conform to those of others without distortion and self-deception. Would this not constitute a real revolution culture?"
"I like to go into the roots of words, because they often show early insights, a fresh perception of meaning. The word 'economy' has a Greek root, meaning 'household management'."
"The question is how our own meanings are related to those of the universe as a whole. We could say that our action toward the whole universe is a result of what it means to be us."
"Paradigms clearly involve, in a key way, the process of taking ideas and concepts for granted, without realizing that this is in fact going on."
"There is a difficulty with only one person changing. People call that person a great saint or a great mystic or a great leader, and they say, 'Well, he's different from me - I could never do it.'
What's wrong with most people is that they have this block - they feel they could never make a difference, and therefore, they never face the possibility, because it is too disturbing, too frightening."
"The ability to perceive or think differently is more important than the knowledge gained."
David Bohm Quotes On The Society
Society consists of a group of people forming a heterogenous mosaic on the earth -different people, beliefs, values, and understandings. David made some great quotes regarding the community we live in and the people we meet both in normal and science-related scenarios. Read them all below.
"Yet, in spite of this worldwide system of linkages, there is, at this very moment, a general feeling that communication is breaking down everywhere, on an unparalleled scale."
"The division between mind and matter, or the observer and the observed, has produced very serious consequences in attempting to see that the world is a whole, because even if you are thinking of wholeness, you are thinking of an observer who is looking at this wholeness, and this creates a division."
"It is the main point of this book that the ultimate source of all these problems is in thought itself, the very thing of which our civilization is most proud, and therefore the one thing that is "hidden" because of our failure seriously to engage with its actual working in our own individual lives and in the life of society."
"...a person cannot form intentions except on the basis of what the situation means to him, and if he misses the mark on what it means, he will form the wrong intentions."
"The point is that we have all sorts of assumptions, not only about politics or economics or religion, but also about what we think an individual should do, or what life is all about, and so forth."
"In some sense, man is a microcosm of the universe; therefore what man is, is a clue of the universe. We are enfolded in the universe."
"Some might say: ‘Fragmentation of cities, religions, political systems...Rather, what should be said is that wholeness is what is real, and that fragmentation is the response of this whole to man’s action, guided by illusory perception, which is shaped by fragmentary thought."
"Going on from there, even relationships with nature and with the cosmos flow out of what they mean to us. These meanings fundamentally affect our actions toward nature, and thus indirectly, the action of nature back on us is affected."
"The essential feature in quantum interconnectedness is that the whole universe is enfolded in everything and that each thing is enfolded in the whole."
"We still need the religious spirit, but today we no longer need the religious mythology, which is now introducing an irrelevant and confusing element into the whole question."
"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 Quotes On Science And Technology
The impact of science and technology on this generation is amazingly huge. However, before they had their full advent around the world, lots of theories, controversies, theses, and predictions were made by scientists and others in the science world, of which David is among.
These David Bohm quotes talk about David's intentions and beliefs while he was still on earth.
"During the past few decades, modern technology, with radio, TV, air travel, and satellites, has woven a network of communication which puts each part of the world in to almost instant contact with all the other parts."
"Science can now help us to understand ourselves in this way by giving factual information about brain structure and function, and how the mind works."
"On the contrary, when one works in terms of the implicate order, one begins with the undivided wholeness of the universe, and the task of science is to derive the parts through abstraction from the whole, explaining them as approximately separable, stable and recurrent, but externally related elements making up relatively autonomous sub-totalities, which are to be described in terms of an explicate order."
"The most essential aspects of this philosophy seem to the author, however, to be its assumption that the great diversity of things that appear in all of our experience, every day as well as scientific, can all be reduced completely and perfectly to nothing more than consequences of the operation of an absolute and final set of purely quantitative laws determining the behavior of a few kinds of basic entities or variables."
"There is no logical reason, however, why, in the unfolding of scientific ideas, several theories may not offer alternative but equally valid and important accounts of a particular aspect of nature."
"Eventually some scientists, who are generally spoken of as geniuses, propose fundamentally new ideas and a "scientific revolution" results. In turn, these new ideas eventually form the basis of a new paradigm, and sooner or later, this rigidifies into "normal" science. In this way the cycle of revolution and "normal" science continues indefinitely."
"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 Quotes On Wholeness And Consciousness
Added to the list are David Bohm's quotes on wholeness and consciousness. Most of these quotes are from some of his books which talk mainly about his point of view on different aspects of life, including reality. Some of the quotes are compiled here for you.
"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."
"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."
"...consciousness is a coherent whole, which is never static or complete, but which is in an unending process of movement and unfoldment."
"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."
"We are internally related to everything, not [just] externally related. Consciousness is an internal relationship to the whole, we take in the whole, and we act toward the whole.
Whatever we have taken in determines basically what we are. Wholeness is a kind of attitude or approach to the whole of life. If we can have a coherent approach to reality then reality will respond coherently to us."
"It is proposed that a form of free dialogue may well be one of the most effective ways of investigating the crisis which faces society, and indeed the whole of human nature and consciousness today.
Moreover, it may turn out that such a form of free exchange of ideas and information is of fundamental relevance for transforming culture and freeing it of destructive misinformation, so that creativity can be liberated."
Other David Bohm Quotes
Other quotes from David Bohm include the following;
"Ultimately, all moments are really one, therefore now is an eternity."
"The notion that all these fragments are separately existent is evidently an illusion, and this illusion cannot do other than lead to endless conflict and confusion."
"One prerequisite for originality is clearly that a person shall not be inclined to impose his preconceptions on the fact as he sees it. Rather, he must be able to learn something new, even if this means that the ideas and notions that are comfortable or dear to him may be overturned.
But the ability to learn in this way is a principle common to the whole of humanity."
"The notion that the one who thinks (the Ego) is at least in principle completely separate from and independent of the reality that he thinks about is of course firmly embedded in our entire tradition."
"What prevents theoretical insights from going beyond existing limitations and changing to meet new facts is just the belief that theories give true knowledge of reality (which implies, of course, that they need never change)."
"Universe consists of frozen light."
"But what is [the] quality of originality? It is very hard to define or specify.
Indeed, to define originality would in itself be a contradiction, since whatever action can be defined in this way must evidently henceforth be unoriginal. Perhaps, then, it will be best to hint at it obliquely and by indirection, rather than to try to assert positively what it is."
"Indeed, for both the rich and the poor, life is dominated by an ever-growing current of problems, most of which seem to have no real and lasting solution. Clearly, we have not touched the deeper causes of our troubles."
"Then there is an art of self knowledge, which each person has to develop for himself. This art must lead one to be sensitive to how his basically false approach to life is always tending to generate conflict and confusion.
The role of art here is therefore not to provide a symbolism, but rather to teach the artistic spirit of sensitive perception of the individual and particular phenomena of one's own psyche."
"It is widely felt that if there is to be any general world view it should be taken as the ‘received’ and ‘final’ notion concerning the nature of reality.
But my attitude has, from the beginning, been that our notions concerning cosmology and the general nature of reality are in a continuous process of development, and that one may have to start with ideas that are merely some sort of improvement over what has thus far been available, and to go on from there to ideas that are better."
"At work, he learns in a similar way, so as to make a living, or for some other utilitarian purpose, and not mainly for the love of the action of learning itself. So his ability to see something new and original gradually dies away. And without it there is evidently no ground from which anything can grow."
"Indeed, the attempt to live according to the notion that the fragments are really separate is, in essence, what has led to the growing series of extremely urgent crises that is confronting us today.
Thus, as is now well known, this way of life has brought about pollution, destruction of the balance of nature, over-population, worldwide economic and political disorder...that is neither physically nor mentally healthy for most of the people who have to live in it."
"What is called for is not an integration of thought, or a kind of imposed unity, for any such imposed point of view would itself be merely another fragment.
Rather, all our different ways of thinking are to be considered as different ways of looking at the one reality, each with some domain in which it is clear and adequate."
"Buddhist philosophy, notion of mutually dependent origination, everything originates together, mutually dependent. It is close to implicate order, which says that everything comes out of a good and everything is interrelated, and that underlying it there is no substance that can be defined."
"One might [then] suggest that in intelligent perception, the brain and nervous system respond directly to an order in the universal and unknown flux that cannot be reduced to anything that could be defined in terms of knowable structures."
"We propose instead that the basic element be a moment which, like the moment of consciousness, cannot be precisely related to measurements of space and time, but rather covers a somewhat vaguely defined region which is extended in space and has duration in time."
"Older theories become more and more unclear when one tries to use them to obtain insight into new domains."
"If one considers this question carefully, one can see that in a certain sense the East was right to see the immeasurable as the primary reality. For, as has already been indicated, measure is an insight created by man. A reality that is beyond man and prior to him cannot depend on such insight."
"I regard the essence of the notion of process as given by the statement: Not only is everything changing, but all is flux. That is to say, what is the process of becoming itself, while all objects, events, entities, conditions, structures, etc., are forms that can be abstracted from this process."
"The thing that mostly gets in the way of dialogue,” he says, “is holding to assumptions and opinions, and defending them.” This instinct to judge and defend, embedded in the self-defense mechanisms of our biological heritage, is the source of incoherence."
"Most of the material environment in which we live — houses, cities, factories, farms, highways, and so on — can be described as the somatic result of the meaning that material objects have had for human beings over the ages."
"William James who advocated a plurality of approaches that are dynamically related. In place of the monolithic unity of the paradigm, which is able to change only by being cracked and shattered in a revolution, would stand a form of unity in plurality."
