Imagination and Participation: A Bohm-Barfield Nexus with Lee Nichol, James Peat Barbieri, Hester Reeve, Mark Vernon

August 15, 2021 – For those who have surveyed David Bohm’s version of dialogue and the larger theoretical context from which it emerged, a trove of concepts and definitions will be familiar: participatory thought, literal thought, thought of type ‘A’ and type ‘B,’ representations, collective representations. What is less familiar is the extent to which Bohm imported these concepts from his long relationship with the philologist Owen Barfield, whose lifework centred around what he called \the evolution of consciousness.’ In this view, human consciousness has shifted from a dispersed, widely focused consciousness (original participation) to the pinpoint, individualized consciousness that…