David Bohm's Rheomode
Jul. 23rd, 2004 07:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sophiaserpentiaI was intrigued by the concept of the "rheomode" when I first encountered it in a comment by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
anosognosia -- intrigued enough that on my first book-shopping excursion after landing the temp job I bought Bohm's book Wholeness and the Implicate Order.
Bohm did not disappoint, but his essay on the rheomode is one of the most difficult things I've read in a while, and so I want to examine it slowly over the course of a few entries here. Already I think my mind is taking the idea and running with it into new directions, and so I will elaborate upon and grow from Bohm's initial proposal.
The rheomode ("flow-mode") was proposed as a thought experiment by Bohm as a way of investigating the way modern language structure forces dualistic thought. Rather than inventing a new language, he wanted to propose adding set of 'intransitive' verbs to the English language which would reflect a line of thought rooted in awareness of the implicate interconnectedness of all and the wholeness of the cosmos.
Reading his essay I had a sense of deja-vu. His verb "to vidate" reminded me strongly of "grokking" as described in Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. See if you agree: "vidation" refers to "every act of perception including even the act of understanding, which is the apprehension of a totality, that includes sense perception, intellect, feeling, etc.... So the verb 'to vidate' will call attention to a spontaneous and unrestricted act of perception of any sort whatsoever, including perception of whether what is seen fits or does not fit 'what is', as well as perception even of the very attention-calling function of the word itself."
It is no surprise that Bohm's description of the rheomode made me think of Heinlein's book, because Michael Valentine Smith's speech patterns exemplify thought as awareness of cosmos-as-flow rather than awareness of things-as-beings. "Waiting is," he and other characters say repeatedly; it is an awkward construction because English in common use is unsuited to capturing an ongoing movement that began before utterance began and which continues on after the utterance is made.
Other parallels came to mind -- Taoism in particular, and the sufi-flavored rendition of Jesus' teachings given by Neil Douglas-Klotz in The Hidden Gospel and Prayers of the Cosmos. In my memories there are links to entries with several quotes from Douglas-Klotz, if I get a chance later I will update this entry, or add a new one, with more explicit comparisons.
anosognosia -- intrigued enough that on my first book-shopping excursion after landing the temp job I bought Bohm's book Wholeness and the Implicate Order.Bohm did not disappoint, but his essay on the rheomode is one of the most difficult things I've read in a while, and so I want to examine it slowly over the course of a few entries here. Already I think my mind is taking the idea and running with it into new directions, and so I will elaborate upon and grow from Bohm's initial proposal.
The rheomode ("flow-mode") was proposed as a thought experiment by Bohm as a way of investigating the way modern language structure forces dualistic thought. Rather than inventing a new language, he wanted to propose adding set of 'intransitive' verbs to the English language which would reflect a line of thought rooted in awareness of the implicate interconnectedness of all and the wholeness of the cosmos.
Reading his essay I had a sense of deja-vu. His verb "to vidate" reminded me strongly of "grokking" as described in Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. See if you agree: "vidation" refers to "every act of perception including even the act of understanding, which is the apprehension of a totality, that includes sense perception, intellect, feeling, etc.... So the verb 'to vidate' will call attention to a spontaneous and unrestricted act of perception of any sort whatsoever, including perception of whether what is seen fits or does not fit 'what is', as well as perception even of the very attention-calling function of the word itself."
It is no surprise that Bohm's description of the rheomode made me think of Heinlein's book, because Michael Valentine Smith's speech patterns exemplify thought as awareness of cosmos-as-flow rather than awareness of things-as-beings. "Waiting is," he and other characters say repeatedly; it is an awkward construction because English in common use is unsuited to capturing an ongoing movement that began before utterance began and which continues on after the utterance is made.
Other parallels came to mind -- Taoism in particular, and the sufi-flavored rendition of Jesus' teachings given by Neil Douglas-Klotz in The Hidden Gospel and Prayers of the Cosmos. In my memories there are links to entries with several quotes from Douglas-Klotz, if I get a chance later I will update this entry, or add a new one, with more explicit comparisons.
