Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
principle of the objectivity of nature. On the contrary, studying liv-
ing organisms by physical and chemical methods and concepts has
indeed only widened in scope to encompass contemporary molecu-
lar biology. We shall see, however, that holism contradicts the prin-
ciple of the objectivity of nature on which scientific practice is
founded, and that it reintroduces animism.
5.2
Philosophical holism
Without exhaustively reviewing the subject, we nevertheless want
to highlight the points common to all versions of holism, and for
this we shall base our remarks on the works of Conwy Lloyd
Morgan (1852-1936), Samuel Alexander (1859-1938) and Jan
Smuts (1870-1950). These three authors all played a major role in
its development at the beginning of the 20th century. Smuts, more-
over a major South African politician, seems to have been the first
to use the word 'holism' in English in his topic
Holism and Evolution
(Smuts, 1926). Morgan is also the author of a reference topic enti-
tled
Emergent Evolution
(Morgan, 1923).
Holism, which is summed up in the famous saying “The whole
is more than the sum of the parts”, is opposed to reductionism. It
asserts that an entity possesses properties which can be neither
explained nor predicted from the elements that make it up and that
it thus forms an irreducible whole. According to this philosophy,
when single elements enter into a relationship to create this whole,
they are themselves altered by virtue of this relationship.
“
A whole is a synthesis or unity of parts, so close that it affects the
activities and interactions of these parts, impresses on them a special
character and makes them different from what they would have been
in a combination devoid of such unity or synthesis
” (HE p. 134).
The determining relationship between the single elements and
the complex whole that they form is therefore defined in the con-
cept of emergence. For the holist, while the whole has so-called
resultant properties, which can be predicted from the properties of
