Similarly, thought is a system. That system not only includes thought and feelings, but it includes the state of the body; it includes the whole of society - as thought is passing back and forth between people in a process by which thought evolved from ancient times.

But with the growth of civilization it has developed a great deal. As a post-graduate at Berkeley he developed a theory of plasmas discovering the electron phenomenon known now as Bohm-diffusion. Bohm lived in the same neighborhood as some of Oppenheimer's other graduate students (Giovanni Rossi Lomanitz Joseph Weinberg and Max Friedman) and with them became increasingly involved not only with physics but with radical politics.

He developed in detail a mathematical and physical theory of implicate and explicate order to complement it. In this his epistemology mirrored his ontological viewpoint. Bohm warned of the dangers of rampant reason and technology advocating instead the need for genuine supportive dialogue which he claimed could broaden and unify conflicting and troublesome divisions in the social world.