1/16/2011

Who is David Bohm?

"I give a meaning to the word 'dialogue' that is somewhat different from what is commonly used. The derivations of words often help to suggest a deeper meaning. 'Dialogue' comes from the Greek word dialogos. Logos means 'the word' or in our case we would think of the 'meaning of the word'. And dia means 'through' - it doesn't mean 'two'. A dialogue can be among any number of people, not just two. Even one person can have a sense of dialogue within himself, if the spirit of the dialogue is present. The picture or image that this derivation suggests is of a stream of meaning flowing among and through us and between us." David Bohm-On dialogue

David Joseph Bohm (1917–1992) was an quantum physicist who studied in the fields of theoretical physics, philosopy and neuropsycology and contributed to the Manhattan Project. He was born in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, Romania and left for USA at the age of 16. He grew in Pennsylvania and studied physics at Berkeley, there he joined J. Robert Oppenheimer's lab and started to work on his doctoral thesis. David Bohm became famous for his work on Plasma Theory-The fourth state of matter and he got an appointment at Princeton University. There he met Albert Einstein and he regarded Bohm as his intellectual successor. His days in Princeton were numbered because of the results of political situations he faced. He moved to Sao Paulo as a Professor of Theoretical Physics. Brazil became the home of former Nazis so he hated being there and decided gladly to go to Israel when Haifa Technion offered him their chair in physics. There he met his wife; Saral and moved to Bristol.




David Bohm was impressed by Jiddu Krishnamurti's philosophical and sociological ideas.  A fruitful exchange between Bohm and Krishnamurti has occured and they wrote the book "The ending of time". Krishnamurti tought that the root of our problems lies in man's quest for security. He asked : "What will make a human mind change? What new factor is necessary for this? Bohm answered:"It is the ability to observe deeply whatever it is that is holding the person and preventing him from changing."

Bohm was disturbed that the two greatest scientist of 20th century; Albert Einstein and Neils Bohr were good friends once but later they became noncommunicable. Einstein was working on relativity and Bohr was working on quantum theory. He thought that if they were in a dialogue they might have listened properly to each other's opinion and moved out beyond relativity and quantum theory. He also saw that this failure was widespread in society either.

In his later years, Bohm wrote a proposal for a solution that has become known as "Bohm Dialogue", in which "equal status" and "free space" form the most important outline specifications of communication and the appreciation of differing personal beliefs. He suggested that if these Dialogue groups were experienced on a sufficiently wide scale, they could help overcome the isolation because he thought that a group about 20 to 40 people is almost a microcosm of the whole society.

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