Dialog, as we use this word in this project, is a specific approach to communication, which is a radical departure from the positivist worldview or epistemology where there is only one worldview that is right; and from the corresponding way of communicating. Since academic communication and evaluation (peer reviews) is largely based on the positivist approach to knowledge, and since this approach has been successfully challenged in a number of disciplines and ways during the past century, not the least in physics, the dialog provides a compendium of possible lines of improvement.
Physicist David Bohm is often credited for developing the dialog as form of communication (after having observed a split in physics and a breakdown in communication, exemplified with Einstein and Bohr at Princeton). After having experimented with group processes for awhile, bohm grew convinced that the dialog (as he defined or better said evolved this concept) was a necessary element of any solution to the contemporary problematique – see his book "On Dialogue".
In the (Phase One) multimedia document, we signaled that we would be following the dialogical approach by the following excerpt from "Science, Order & Creativity" by David Bohm and David Peat:
It is desirable at all times, and not merely during periods of scientific revolution, that there be the possibility of free play of the mind on fundamental questions [...] the opening up of a free and creative communication in all areas of science would constitute a tremendous extension of the scientific approach [...] what is called for is a kind of free play within the individual and society so that the mind does not become rigidly committed to a limited set of assumptions, or caught up in confusion and false play. Out of this free play could emerge the true creative potential of a society.
Bohm's work on the dialog was further deepened by a series of contributions edited by Jenlink and Banathy in two volumes.
The prototype procedure for (scientific) co-creation and evaluation we are developing and using in this project, alias our 'collective mind', is dialogical in at least two ways:
- By developing his model of direct creativity as he did, Dejan Rakovic set a template where (instead of being uninterested as a scientist or even denying a phenomenon because we don't have a conclusive, or as the case may be a classical explanation) he observes a relevant phenomenon and freely constructs a model, by combining patterns of interaction, results, insights... mainly from quantum physics
- By developing a co-creative dialogical process around this model, to improve it indefinitely, link it with other relevant ideas, develop consequences and make them known and impactful...
It is now an interesting and most relevant exercise to see how this approach or this 'collective mind' may be applied further – and ultimately toward a co-creation of a radically new 'emerging worldview'.