On Dialogue (Routledge Classics) (Volume 76)

by David Bohm

Now, you could say that our ordinary thought in society is incoherent – it is going in all sorts of directions, with thoughts conflicting and canceling each other out. But if people were to think together in a coherent way, it would have tremendous power. That’s the suggestion. If we have a dialogue situation – a group which has sustained dialogue for quite a while in which people get to know each other, and so on – then we might have such a coherent movement of thought, a coherent movement of communication. It would be coherent not only at the level we recognize, but at the tacit level, at the level for which we have only a vague feeling. That would be more important. “Tacit” means that which is unspoken, which cannot be described – like the knowledge required to ride a bicycle. It is the actual knowledge, and it may be coherent or not. I am proposing that thought is actually a subtle tacit process. The concrete process of thinking is very tacit. The meaning is basically tacit. And what we can say explicitly is only a very small part of it. I think we all realize that we do almost everything by this sort of tacit knowledge. Thought is emerging from the tacit ground, and any fundamental change in thought will come from the tacit ground. So if we are communicating at the tacit level, then maybe thought is changing.