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Wholeness and the Implicate Order QUOTES

Wholeness and the Implicate Order QUOTES

1 " Thus, in scientific research, a great deal of our thinking is in terms of theories. The word ‘theory’ derives from the Greek ‘theoria’, which has the same root as ‘theatre’, in a word meaning ‘to view’ or ‘to make a spectacle’. Thus, it might be said that a theory is primarily a form of insight, i.e. a way of looking at the world, and not a form of knowledge of how the world is. "

― David Bohm , Wholeness and the Implicate Order

2 " some might say: ‘Fragmentation of cities, religions, political systems, conflict in the form of wars, general violence, fratricide, etc., are the reality. Wholeness is only an ideal, toward which we should perhaps strive.’ But this is not what is being said here. 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. "

― David Bohm , Wholeness and the Implicate Order

3 " many individuals going beyond the ‘normal’ limits of fragmentation are classified as paranoid, schizoid, psychotic, etc. "

― David Bohm , Wholeness and the Implicate Order

4 " [T]here is a universal flux that cannot be defined explicitly but which can be known only implicitly, as indicated by the explicitly definable forms and shapes, some stable and some unstable, that can be abstracted from the universal flux. In this flow, mind and matter are not separate substances. Rather, they are different aspects of our whole and unbroken movement. "

― David Bohm , Wholeness and the Implicate Order

5 " 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). "

― David Bohm , Wholeness and the Implicate Order

6 " Clarity of perception and thought evidently requires that we be generally aware of how our experience is shaped by the insight (clear or confused) provided by the theories that are implicit or explicit in our general ways of thinking. "

― David Bohm , Wholeness and the Implicate Order

7 " we merely say that man is continually developing new forms of insight, which are clear up to a point and then tend to become unclear. In this activity, there is evidently no reason to suppose that there is or will be a final form of insight (corresponding to absolute truth) "

― David Bohm , Wholeness and the Implicate Order

8 " In this flow, mind and matter are not separate substances. Rather, they are different aspects of one whole and unbroken movement. "

― David Bohm , Wholeness and the Implicate Order

9 " 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. "

― David Bohm , Wholeness and the Implicate Order

10 " 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. "

― David Bohm , Wholeness and the Implicate Order

11 " the almost universal habit of taking the content of our thought for ‘a description of the world as it is’. Or we could say that, in this habit, our thought is regarded as in direct correspondence with objective reality. Since our thought is pervaded with differences and distinctions, it follows that such a habit leads us to look on these as real divisions, so that the world is then seen and experienced as actually broken up into fragments. "

― David Bohm , Wholeness and the Implicate Order

12 " If we supposed that theories gave true knowledge, corresponding to ‘reality as it is’, then we would have to conclude that Newtonian theory was true until around 1900, after which it suddenly became false, while relativity and quantum theory suddenly became the truth. Such an absurd conclusion does not arise, however, if we say that all theories are insights, which are neither true nor false but, rather, clear in certain domains, and unclear when extended beyond these domains. "

― David Bohm , Wholeness and the Implicate Order

13 " relativity and quantum theory agree, in that they both imply the need to look on the world as an undivided whole, in which all parts of the universe, including the observer and his instruments, merge and unite in one totality. In this totality, the atomistic form of insight is a simplification and an abstraction, valid only in some limited context. "

― David Bohm , Wholeness and the Implicate Order

14 " 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, world-wide economic and political disorder, and the creation of an overall environment that is neither physically nor mentally healthy for most of the people who have to live in it. "

― David Bohm , Wholeness and the Implicate Order

15 " So what is needed is for man to give attention to his habit of fragmentary thought, to be aware of it, and thus bring it to an end. Man’s approach to reality may then be whole, and so the response will be whole. "

― David Bohm , Wholeness and the Implicate Order

16 " So the relationship of each moment in the whole to all the others is implied by its total content: the way in which it ‘holds’ all the others enfolded within it. "

― David Bohm , Wholeness and the Implicate Order

17 " it has always been both necessary and proper for man, in his thinking, to divide things up, and to separate them, so as to reduce his problems to manageable proportions; for evidently, if in our practical technical work we tried to deal with the whole of reality all at once, we would be swamped. So, in certain ways, the creation of special subjects of study and the division of labour was an important step forward. "

― David Bohm , Wholeness and the Implicate Order

18 " 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. "

― David Bohm , Wholeness and the Implicate Order

19 " Being guided by a fragmentary self-world view, man then acts in such a way as to try to break himself and the world up, so that all seems to correspond to his way of thinking. Man thus obtains an apparent proof of the correctness of his fragmentary self-world view though, of course, he overlooks the fact that it is he himself, acting according to his mode of thought, who has brought about the fragmentation that now seems to have an autonomous existence, independent of his will and of his desire. "

― David Bohm , Wholeness and the Implicate Order

20 " One must then go on to a consideration of time as a projection of multidimensional reality into a sequence of moments. "

― David Bohm , Wholeness and the Implicate Order