Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
doubtedly brought us. This dawning awareness of the
anima mundi
in our times is in
truth a reawakening of the old, nondualistic animism that has been dormant for so long.
It is a reassertion of our indigenous soul, and of the felt solidarity with earthly nature
common to our indigenous, tribal ancestors. Our task now is to explore ways in which
the new animism can be integrated into the very heart of Western culture. Holistic sci-
ence is one possibility.
Holistic Science
There has always been a holistic, integrative strand in Western culture, espousing an
animistic understanding, that ran alongside the reductionist scientific mainstream. One
can even make a good case that the integrative and reductionist modes of conscious-
ness are both innate to the human organism, and that they have manifested in differ-
ent cultures in different ways at different times. Historian Donald Worster suggests that
these two strands have been present in Western thought since the ancient Greeks, call-
ing them the 'Arcadian' and the 'Imperial' strands of ecological thought. Philosopher
Richard Tarnas refers to these two modes of perception as the 'empirical' and the 'ar-
chetypal', and novelist-scientist C. P. Snow spoke of the 'two cultures', science and the
arts, which to his mind were almost impossible to reconcile. Some cultures held the bal-
ance more skilfully, and with more awareness than our own culture has done until now.
For example, in Hindu philosophy one finds both tendencies expressed in the writings
of various teachers, some of whom espoused a radical form of reductionism reminiscent
of Democritus, the Greek philosopher who declared that everything is composed of in-
divisible units known as atoms (from the Greek
a-tom
, that which is indivisible).
Holistic science weaves together the empirical and the archetypal aspects of the mind
so that they work together as equal partners in a quest that aims not at a complete un-
derstanding and mastery of nature, but rather that strives for genuine participation with
nature. But how to clearly explain the approach of holistic science? When a prospective
student first asked me for a coherent definition of holistic science, his question disturbed
me, and for several days I could give no satisfactory response. Then it suddenly came
to me that I could provide a useful answer by drawing on a profound insight from the
great Swiss psychologist C. G. Jung, who spoke of four main psychological functions,
or ways of knowing, common to all humanity, namely: intuition, sensing, thinking and
feeling. Jung arranged these as two pairs of opposites, as follows
(Figure 1
):
