In Thought as a System, best-selling author David Bohm takes as his subject the role of thought and knowledge at every level of human affairs, from our private reflections on personal identity to our collective efforts to fashion a tolerable civilization. Elaborating upon principles of the relationship between mind and matter first put forward in Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Professor Bohm rejects the notion that our thinking processes neutrally report on what is ‘out there’ in an objective world. He explores the manner in which thought actively participates in forming our perceptions, our sense of meaning and our daily actions. He suggests that collective thought and knowledge have become so automated that we are in large part controlled by them, with a subsequent loss of authenticity, freedom and order. In conversations with fifty seminar participants in Ojai, California, David Bohm offers a radical perspective on an underlying source of human conflict, and inquires into the possibility of individual and collective transformation. This is a transcription of a seminar held in Ojai, California from 31 November to 2 December 1990. It has been edited by Professor Bohm.
Biography
The late David Bohm was Emeritus Professor at Birkbeck College, University of London. He was the author of many articles and books including Causality and Chance in Modern Physics, Wholeness and the Implicate Order and The Undivided Universe (with Basil Hiley).
