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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index B > David Bohm Quotes

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David Bohm
(20 Dec 1917 - 27 Oct 1992)

British physicist.

Science Quotes by David Bohm (8 quotes)

I think people get it upside down when they say the unambiguous is the reality and the ambiguous is merely uncertainty about what is really unambiguous. Let’s turn it around the other way: the ambiguous is the reality and the unambiguous is merely a special case of it, where we finally manage to pin down some very special aspect.
— David Bohm
In William Byers, How Mathematicians Think (2007), 25.
Science quotes on:  |  Ambiguity (17)  |  Ambiguous (14)  |  Aspect (129)  |  Down (455)  |  Manage (26)  |  Merely (315)  |  Other (2233)  |  People (1031)  |  Pin (20)  |  Reality (274)  |  Say (989)  |  Special (188)  |  Special Case (9)  |  Think (1122)  |  Turn (454)  |  Uncertainty (58)  |  Upside Down (8)  |  Way (1214)

In my opinion progress in science is usually made by dropping assumptions.
— David Bohm
As quoted from first-hand conversation by Paul Davies, in About Time: Einstein's Unfinished Revolution (1995, 1996), 199.
Science quotes on:  |  Assumption (96)  |  Dropping (8)  |  Opinion (291)  |  Progress (492)  |  Usually (176)

In relativity, movement is continuous, causally determinate and well defined; while in quantum mechanics it is discontinuous, not causally determinate and not well defined.
— David Bohm
In Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980), xv.
Science quotes on:  |  Continuous (83)  |  Defined (4)  |  Determinate (7)  |  Discontinuous (6)  |  Mechanic (120)  |  Mechanics (137)  |  Movement (162)  |  Quantum (118)  |  Quantum Mechanics (47)  |  Relativity (91)

In some sense man is a microcosm of the universe: therefore what man is, is a clue to the universe. We are enfolded in the universe.
— David Bohm
Quoted in Renée Weber, Dialogues with scientists and sages: the search for unity (1986),
Science quotes on:  |  Clue (20)  |  Man (2252)  |  Microcosm (10)  |  Sense (785)  |  Universe (900)

The prevailing trend in modern physics is thus much against any sort of view giving primacy to ... undivided wholeness of flowing movement. Indeed, those aspects of relativity theory and quantum theory which do suggest the need for such a view tend to be de-emphasized and in fact hardly noticed by most physicists, because they are regarded largely as features of the mathematical calculus and not as indications of the real nature of things.
— David Bohm
Wholeness and the Implicate Order? (1981), 14.
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The question of relevance comes before that of truth, because to ask whether a statement is true or false presupposes that it is relevant (so that to try to assert the truth or falsity of an irrelevant statement is a form of confusion)...
— David Bohm
From Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980, 2002), 42.
Science quotes on:  |  Ask (420)  |  Assert (69)  |  Assertion (35)  |  Confusion (61)  |  Falsity (16)  |  Form (976)  |  Irrelevance (4)  |  Presuppose (15)  |  Question (649)  |  Relevance (18)  |  Statement (148)  |  Truth (1109)  |  Try (296)

The various particles have to be taken literally as projections of a higher-dimensional reality which cannot be accounted for in terms of any force of interaction between them.
— David Bohm
Wholeness and the Implicate Order? (1981), 186.
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There is the immense sea of energy ... a multidimensional implicate order, ... the entire universe of matter as we generally observe it is to be treated as a comparatively small pattern of excitation. This excitation pattern is relatively autonomous and gives rise to approximately recurrent, stable separable projections into a three-dimensional explicate order of manifestation, which is more or less equivalent to that of space as we commonly experience it.
— David Bohm
Wholeness and the Implicate Order? (1981), 192.
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Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
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