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Karen Tesson writes:
In the latter half of the twentieth century the view that we now call Holism was significantly expanded. System, chaos and complexity theories suggest that many natural systems cannot be entirely understood through reductive analysis alone, and that certain properties only emerge when the system functions as a whole. By contrast, holism maintains that natural systems can only be understood by looking at them in their entirety. In this way then, the holistic approach differs significantly from the non-linear models of chaos and complexity theories, it also presents a view that is in direct opposition to the classical Cartesian/Newtonian approach. In recent years, holism has become explicitly connected with ecology, and particularly with what is now known as “deep ecology” (Capra, 1996). In contrast to “shallow ecology”, which considers humans as separate from nature, deep ecology treats humans as part of their environment, like all other species. It sees the world not as a series of isolated objects, but as a complex network of interrelated systems. Some proponents of the holistic view consider all natural systems (including human systems) to be organic and indeed to be organisms in their own right. The first to do this was James Lovelock, an atmospheric chemist who developed a model of the world that he called Gaia (Lovelock, 1979). Gaia theory treats earth as a living organism, with self-regulating internal processes that make it a self-sustaining system. Apart from using heat from the sun, according to Gaia theory, the earth manages itself entirely from within. Lovelock named the model Gaia after the Greek goddess of the Earth. A key aspect of Gaia theory is that it considers the earth’s atmosphere to be maintained and actively regulated by the sum of all living organisms on the planet (Lovelock and Margulis, 1997). Effectively, Lovelock’s model is a view that unites the earth’s surface, life and atmosphere together a single cybernetic system (Sagan and Margulis, 1997). Initially, many orthodox scientists rejected Gaia theory. The concept of Gaia struck at the heart of their classical modes of enquiry as it implied that the earth could not be understood merely through investigating its internal mechanisms and processes, rather, it was necessary to consider it as single unified system. One scientist who criticised Gaia theory particularly strongly in the early days was the evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins. Dawkins, whose book titled “The Selfish Gene” had been published in 1976, three years prior to Lovelock’s “Gaia”, was a fierce advocate for the powers of Darwinian natural selection. Dawkins believed that all life on Earth was the result of evolutionary selection processes, which determine that only the most successful individuals of a species survive to reproduce. According to Dawkins, Gaia theory, with its implication that the Earth was a living organism, was contrary to the laws of natural selection. For Gaia theory to work, said Dawkins, there would have had to be a number of competing Gaias, so that natural selection could determine which of them was most fit and would survive. Dawkins referred to this as a form of “interplanetary” selection, and laughed the whole of Gaia theory off as being highly improbable (Dawkins, 1982). To counter these arguments, Lovelock developed a computer model of Gaia to convince sceptic scientists (Lovelock and Margulis, 1997); he called it “Daisyworld”. Daisyworld was a “virtual” planet that was warmed by a sun. Only two species, black daisies and white daisies inhabited it. The whole of this virtual planet was moist and fertile enough to support these daisy plants, but the temperature across the planet was allowed to vary, and the plants could only grow within a certain temperature range. The daisy plants were able to regulate the temperature locally, black daisies warmed the environment (because being black they absorb heat), and the white daisies cooled it (as they reflected the sun’s rays). Overall this computerised model showed that the daisies enabled the planet to self-regulate its temperature. In this very simple model, the self-regulation only worked for a limited time, and eventually the planet became too hot to sustain life. However, Lovelock later developed more complex models with greater numbers of species that were able to self-regulate the temperature for longer periods. As a result of these studies, Gaia theory began to gain recognition within the scientific community, and subsequently a number of scientific research teams worked with Gaia as their theoretical start point (Capra, 1996). Another proponent of the deep ecological view is Ervin Laszlo (Laszlo, 1996). Laszlo’s model takes an integrated view of nature, stating that natural systems connect different levels of order in the natural world. Like Lovelock, Laszlo considers natural systems to be self-organizing, and self-sustaining. Laszlo also says that groups of objects or organisms may form “supraorganic” entities that have properties that are “more than the sum of their parts”. For example, the neurons that collectively form the human brain are not independently conscious, yet when functioning together in the brain, consciousness emerges. Another of Laszlo’s examples is that of a football team, independently the team members have their own identities and skills, but what makes the team “work” is their ability to co-relate during a game, coalescing to form a functional whole that we see as a “team”. The supraorganic group, says Laszlo, has characters that are not just the features of the members that make it up, but also of the relations between the members. On to Part 6: Problems with the holistic approach Back to Table of Contents |
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