In the past, when we encountered those who differed from us, we did so usually to defeat them, as opponents, because we were convinced that we alone had the truth. But that is not what dialogue is. Dialogue is not debate. In dialogue, each partner must listen to the other as openly and sympathetically as possible in an attempt to understand the other s position as precisely and, as it were, from within, as possible. Of course, there are many external factors that have appeared in the past two centuries that have contributed to the creation of what we today call the global village.
Transportation is one, although it doesn t always work.
Communication is another. I do better with E-mail and the Web than I do on airplanes sometimes. In addition to these external developments, there have been fundamental intellectual changes as well. Thomas Koon, who died recently, revolutionized our understanding of the development of scientific thinking with his notion of paradigm shifts. He painstakingly showed that fundamental paradigms, or exemplary models, are the large thought frames within which we place and interpret observed data.