Physicist David Bohm writes,on Dialogue dialogue can be considered as a free flow of meaning between people in communication, in the

sense of a stream that flows between banks. A key difference between a dialogue and an ordinary discussion is that, within the later, people usually hold relatively fixed positions and argue in favor of their views as they try to convince others to change. In a dialogue, however, a person may prefer a certain position but does not hold to it nonnegotiably. He or she is ready to listen to others with sufficient sympathy and interest to understand the meaning of the others position properly and is also ready to change his or her own point of view if there is good reason to do so. This brings us to an important root feature of science, which is also present in dialogue: to be ready to acknowledge any fact and any point of view as it actually is, whether one likes it or not. In many areas of life, people are, on the contrary, disposed to collude in order to avoid acknowledging facts or points of view that they find unpleasant or unduly disturbing. Science is, however, at least in principle, dedicated to seeing any fact as it is, and to being open to free communication with regard to not only the fact itself, but also to the point of view from which it is interpreted. In dialogue, it is necessary that people be able to face their disagreements without confrontation and be willing to explore points of view to which they do not personally subscribe. One of the major barriers to this sort of dialogue is the rigidity in the tacit infrastructures of the individual and society. In other words, in dialogue one suspends, for the time being, tacit infrastructures, judgment, confrontation, and defense of personal points of view. This results in freeing the mind to explore new perceptions. In dialogue, there is no expectation of results but a true freeing of the mind to explore. --------Excerpted from On Dialogue by David Bohm, published by Routledge, 1996. David Bohm, Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics at Birkbeck College, University of London. His books include: Wholeness and the Implicate Order, The Undivided Universe, (with Basil Hiley), Causality and Chance in Modern Physics, Science Order and Creativity, (with F. David Peat), Unfolding Meaning, and Thought as a System.