"The Magic of Dialogue" (2)

The first chapter of Yankelovich's book offers a definition of dialogue - straight from Webster's dictionary: "seeking mutual understanding and harmony". Although Yankelovich then goes on to downplay the harmony bit and says he'd be happy to settle just for understanding. Interestingly, he quotes Martin Buber ("I and Thou") who draws a distinction between "ordinary conversation" and dialogue. It seems the key thing with dialogue is the willingness to suspend judgement and just to listen to the other person. You don't have to agree - but you do have to listen so as to understand (pp14 - 15).

The chapter gets really interesting when Yankelovich quotes physicist David Bohm as saying that "world class" physicists get their best ideas in dialogue with other physicists and not sitting at their desks. He then extends this link between dialogue and thought by talking about how the American public does democracy. The American public doesn't reach decisions based on expert analysis - rather it reaches decisions using dialogue. And in so doing it is "harking back to prescientific ways of knowing" (p26).

To drive home this point - that dialogue is a "way of knowing" - a way of arriving at decisions - Yankelovich gives the example of ETS (p28). This is a non-profit organisation that administers the SAT and other college tests. Yankelovich's summary is worth quoting here:

"Plenty of information exists about the strengths and limitations of standardised tests. ETS's board takes these facts into account. But the facts do not reveal to the Board what its vision for the future should be or the best strategy for achieving it. Only high quality dialogue among its diverse members and professional staff can yield this kind of understanding and judgement." (p28)

Of course this reminds me of Aristotle's two roads to truth - logic and rhetoric. Both of which are strictly "prescientific". And of course, Cicero's observation that governing Carthage isn't going to be successful if all we do is take the "facts into account". How we decide to govern Carthage will only be worked out in "high quality dialogue".