Wholeness

One can speak of a wholeness (Greek: ὅλον holon) insofar as the irreducible unity of the whole is more than the mere sum of its parts and also includes the lawful structural and, if necessary, also functional relationship of the parts to each other. Aristotle in his philosophical clarity, was one of the first to point out this supersummativity, which reveals itself to be an integrated way of thinking known today as Holism:

„That which is composed of constituent parts in such a way that it forms a unified whole is not like a heap, but like a syllable, which is obviously more than merely the sum of its constituent parts. A syllable is not the sum of its sounds: ba is not the same as b plus a, and flesh is not the same as fire plus earth.“

– Aristotle:: Metaphysics, Book 8.6. 1045a: 8-10.

The term "Holism" was first used by Jan Christiaan Smuts in his 1926 book Holism and Evolution. Smuts writes about it in the preface:

„This factor, called Holism in the sequel, underlies the synthetic tendency in the universe, and is the principle which makes for the origin and progress of wholes in the universe. An attempt is made to show that this whole-making or holistic tendency is fundamental in nature, that it has a well-marked ascertainable character, and that Evolution is nothing but the gradual development and stratification of progressive series of wholes, stretching from the inorganic beginnings to the highest levels of spiritual creation.“

– Jan Christiaan Smuts: Holism and Evolution, Preface archive.org

Approaches to a holistic world view, however, can be found much earlier in Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Aristotle (see above).

Today, holism assumes that the individual elements into which a system is divided, which is understood as a "wholeness" or "gestalt" (German), are completely determined by the internal structural relationships. Holism is thus diametrically opposed to the reductionism predominant in the natural sciences today. The main argument against reductionism is the phenomenon of "emergence", i.e. the incomplete explicability of the whole from the parts. However, the physicist Hans-Peter Dürr has emphatically emphasised that the world is ultimately to be regarded as a whole, even from a physical point of view:

„Thus, according to the new view, what is separate (for example, through the idea of isolated atoms) is not at the beginning of reality, but rather approximate separation is the possible result of a formation of structure, namely: generation of unconnectedness through extinction in the intermediate area (Dürr 1992). The relationships between parts of a whole thus do not only arise secondarily as an interaction of what was originally isolated, but are an expression of a primary identity of everything. A relational structure thus arises not only through communication, a mutual exchange of signals, reinforced by resonance, but also, to a certain extent, through communion, through identification....

The holistic features of reality, as expressed in the new fundamental structure of matter, offer here the decisive prerequisite for ensuring that the features of the living that are essential for us are not thereby mutilated into mechanistic functions.“ (Lit.: Dürr 1997)

A higher form of wholeness exists when the parts are images of the whole in a specific processed refined way. This is when the overall structure, as the mutual relationship of all parts, is reflected in them, usually in a characteristically metamorphosed form. For example, the human organism is more than the sum of its organs and in each individual organ the whole human being is reflected, or resonates in such a specific way that this is not always easy to instantly grasp.

„Every living thing is not an individual, but a majority; even in so far as it appears to us as an individual, it nevertheless remains an assembly of living independent beings, which in idea, in disposition, are alike, but in appearance can become alike or similar, dissimilar or unalike. Originally these beings are already partly connected, and thus, partly they find and unite. They divide and seek each other again, and thus effect an infinite production in every way and in all directions.
The more imperfect the creature, the more these parts are like or similar to each other, and the more they resemble the whole. The more perfect the creature becomes, the more dissimilar the parts become to each other. In the former instance, the whole is more or less like the parts; in the latter, the whole is dissimilar to the parts. The more similar the parts are to each other, the less subordinate they are to each other. The subordination of the parts points to a more perfect creature.“

– Goethe:: On Morphology: The Intention Initiated.

Even individual subordinate parts form structural and functional wholes in their own right again, which are to be given special attention. Arthur Koestler (1905-1983) coined the term holon (from Greek: ὅλος hólos and ὀν on "that which is part of a whole") for this. Thus, for example, the cells of a living being form relative wholes, to which the organs are superordinated, which in turn are integrated into the more comprehensive wholeness of the organism. This creates a hierarchically ordered system of holons, a so-called Holarchy.

The further dissection of elementary wholes is, as Goethe already emphasised, quite legitimate for research purposes, but the wholeness of the living system is lost in the process.

„We consider the organic body insofar as its parts still have form, designate a certain definite purpose and stand in relation to other parts. Anything that destroys the form of the part, that divides the muscle into muscle fibres, that dissolves the bone into jelly, is not applied by us. Not as if we did not want to know and appreciate that further dissection, but because, even as we pursue our expressed final purpose, we see before us a great and unlimited day's labour.“

– Goethe:: Fragments on Comparative Anatomy

The whole world, the whole cosmos, was originally conceived as a whole; but if it had stayed that way alone, the parts, in turn, could have never themselves become independent and matured into independent wholes. In order to give man, in particular, the space to develop his own individuality, the primordial wholeness of the cosmos had to be broken up to a certain extent, and this necessary work was undertaken by the adversary powers.

„Until the 13th and 14th centuries, no great importance was attached to dissecting and composing a whole from its individual parts in human thinking. That only came later. The master builder built much more from the idea of the whole and subdivided it into parts than he would have put together a building from parts. Assembling from parts actually only came later in human civilisation. And this led to the fact that people began to think of everything as being composed of the smallest parts. This is where the atomistic theory in physics came from. That is solely propagated through education. Our great scholars would not speak so much of these tiny little caricatures of demons - for they are caricatures of demons - of atoms, had it not been for people through their education of becoming so accustomed to putting everything together from fragmented parts. That is how atomism came about. We criticise atomism today; but actually the criticisms are quite superfluous, because people cannot easily get away from how they have been accustomed to thinking wrongly for four or five centuries: instead of thinking from the whole into its parts, they think from the parts into the whole.“ (Lit.:GA 311, p. 84f)

The fact that the world is ultimately to be regarded as a totality, even from a physical point of view, has been emphatically emphasised by the physicist Hans-Peter Dürr.

„Thus, according to the new view, what is separate (for example, through the idea of isolated atoms) is not at the beginning of reality, but rather an approximate separation as the possible result of a formation of structure, namely: generation of nonconnectedness through extinction in the intermediate area (Dürr 1992). The relationships between parts of a whole thus do not only arise secondarily as an interaction of what was originally isolated, but are an expression of a primary identity of everything. A relational structure thus arises not only through communication, a mutual exchange of signals, reinforced by resonance, but also, to a certain extent, through communion, through identification....

The holistic features of reality, as expressed in the new fundamental structure of matter, offer here the decisive prerequisite for ensuring that the features of the living that are essential for us are not thereby mutilated into mechanistic functions.“ (Lit.: Dürr 1997)

This statement corresponds to the concept of modern quantum theory. The chemist Hans Primas therefore emphasised:

„If we consider quantum mechanics to be a good theory of matter, then the statement "Matter is built up of elementary building blocks" is scientifically wrong. What is decisive is not the fact that the chemists' atoms are further divisible - that would be a trivial matter of nomenclature - but that material reality is a whole that is not built up of parts at all.“ (Lit.: Primas, p. 50)

Literature

• Jan Christiaan Smuts: Holism and Evolution, Macmillan, New York 1926 archive.org
  • German: Die holistische Welt, Mit einem Vorwort des Verfassers zur deutschen Ausgabe und einem Geleitwort von Adolf Meyer, herausgegeben und übersetzt von Helmut Minkowski, Metzner, Berlin 1938
• Hans-Peter Dürr (Hrsg.): Rupert Sheldrake in der Diskussion, Scherz-Verlag, Bern München Wien 1997, S 227ff
• Hans Primas: Umdenken in der Naturwissenschaft in: Vierteljahrsschrift der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Zürich (1992) 137/l, S. 41-62 (genehmigter Nachdruck aus «GAIA; Ecological Perspectives in Science, Humanities and Economics» (1992) 1, l, 5-15 pdf
• Rudolf Steiner: Die Kunst des Erziehens aus dem Erfassen der Menschenwesenheit, GA 311 (1989), ISBN 3-7274-3110-5 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org

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