Finally getting down to some David Bohm texts that I’ve been wanting to absorb for years but never had the time or access. I had a short correspondence with his widow some years back for the purpose of responding to the Dialogue essay and subsequently hosting it on the neoscenes third-party texts area. After Buber, Bohm was the first to show up as a source on my dialogue radar, an influential one at that, when a contemporary concept of dialogue-praxis is examined. Bohm has a powerful and holistic approach, literally, grounded in a worldview based on his interpretation of Quantum, the development of which he was an integral player. I am more than encouraged — inspired would be the correct word — by his approach, rigor, and mapping of a powerful foundational approach to human relation both with the cosmos and with each Other.
Also crucial to his view is the problematic nature of language as it exists (English, specifically), suggesting that the (tyranny) of subject-verb-object be replaced with a structure that emphasizes the verb — emphasizing action over thing (reflecting back to ancient Hebrew as did David Abram in The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World where the written language included only the consonants, and vowels—which necessarily need expiration, a projection of the spirit to say—were introduced by the spoken reader, infusing the word with the life-spirit of breath.
The shifting of English that Bohm suggests illustrates how language informs/forms ones worldview as Benjamin Whorf promoted with his concept of linguistic relativity (which has always seemed obvious to me, an awareness perhaps brought about through the process of photographic abstraction of the world).
Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Bohm, David, Routledge, London, 2002
The diversity of languages is not a diversity of signs and sounds but a diversity of views of the world. — Wilhelm von Humboldt
Then the question of how to deal with all these books at once? Where to read them, how to take notes, how much to read in any one at a time, and such. Reading in the evening before sleeping isn’t very good, although restful. Mid-afternoon is optimal, but carving out several hours from the daily to-do grind makes that difficult. Having a space in the CMAI office is very helpful now, as there are more comfortable chairs. The collective grad offices are too noisy and busy. Dislocating to Bronte or a cafe elsewhere is possible, but not time-effective if only for reading. Ach!, the questions of methodology …