Tuesday, July 26, 2016

The power of Dialogue


Knowledge is divided broadly into two categories: Tacit and Explicit. Explicit is that which can be put into words while Tacit is difficult to express but constitutes perhaps the substance of the communication on a subject. Isaac has written about the ability of Dialogue to access and express the tacit domain:

Just as the know-how people use to ride a bicycle cannot be stated, the knowledge people use to think, particularly to think collectively, is tacit. Our tacit ways of thinking govern how we formulate our views, deal with differences, pay attention, make causal connections: in short these tacit influences are like the operating software that govern the ways human beings perceive the world and take action in it. Incoherence in these tacit springs of experience leads people to create unintended effects when they act, and to remain unaware of the fact that they are actively participating in ways of thinking and acting that continue to produce these effects. People are in effect out of contact with the sources and impacts of their thinking and acting. As physicist David Bohm put it, "thought creates the world and then says, I didn't do it." One purpose of dialogue is to reestablish contact so that this tacit ground can be accessed, its impacts perceived, and its effects altered.

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