I have studied Holism for some time now, and the other night I watched a two hour program on it called ‘I am” It was produced in 2010 I think, so it has been out for a little while.

Although the concept of Holism is not new, and it is interesting, I just have a hard time understanding why, if it is even accurate, it is important.

The main point is that all life, and maybe even consciousness, is connected. OK, so what does that mean in pragmatic terms? How does that benefit us as a species having knowledge of such a concept?

The show pointed out that human genetics is 99% the same as our closest primate relative the Chimpanzee. No informed person today questions that. We also have many genes in common with Corn and Bacteria. OK, nobody that studies genetics would question that. But how does that help us?

I think Holism confuses connection with descent. We have known for a long time now about common descent, and even intelligent design propagandist fuckwits like Michael Behe admit that they agree with common descent. Hell Darwin figured that out 160 years ago.

I have a liver. That body organ does various things such as filters blood, breaks down toxins and produces enzymes. Fish have a liver. We are connected. Actually we are descended from fish if you go back far enough. At some point we had a common ancestor, as does all life on earth. a wonderful book put out a few years ago by a wonderful scientist named Neil Shubin, elaborated on that very fact that we should understand our bauplan as our ‘inner fish’

The whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts. Who first said that? Aristotle? Some other ancient Greek or Roman western thinking genius?

But what does that actually mean? We are connected in that is we have similarities. But we also have differences, some of them drastic. because our brains may be made u of the same sub-atomic particles as the rings of Saturn does not necessarily mean that we very much in common does it?

I think Holism is a nice philosophy of science in that it tries to draw distinctions between we humans and the universe. It tries to bridge the gap of the great schism. We are alive and the universe, as far as we can tell, is not. My liver might be genetically 70% the same as some yet to be found bacterium on Mars, but…..what does that really mean? Does it add real value to the discussion?

I am not claiming that Holism is wrong. I am just wondering what explanatory power the concept gives us as a species.

Can’t say much right now, but I think one thing is that it gets us thinking in terms of the overall picture rather than fragmented parts.  I’ll paraphrase a quote from a 1970s article by EGC Sudarshan (well-known physicist at the time): “Every time we look at the world we break it into island universes, severing any connections between them.  Then we act surprised when they turn out to be correlated.”

From http://twitter.com/shitmydadsays: “Science and Mother Nature are in a marriage where Science is always surprised to come home and find Mother Nature blowing the neighbor.”

So it’s all connected.  Now what?  Even religion says that.  Maybe it helps dispel loneliness?  Maybe it encourages us to find the connections?  I don’t know what is to be done with that bit of understanding either, but it’s not as personal and comforting as “Jesus loves you.”

From the description you provide it doesn’t sound like it offers any explanatory power at all.

It sounds more like a way of looking at the world. An attitude, basically.

The only real benefit I can think of is that it might remind us that reductionism is unlikely to be successful in explaining emergent behaviour of complex systems. Keep the whole thing in mind. Build abstractions to model the behaviour of more complex underlying layers of meaning.

There’s no point studying atoms if you’re trying to understand economics, in other words.

As for the “connection between all living things” type of stuff, that sounds like new age nonsense to me. It might be true in some limited senses as you mentioned, but it’s not actually terribly significant.

Yes. It’s an orientation. Or theology if you like. I dig it but I wouldn’t claim that it advances knowledge necessarily. Except that the essential acknowledgment is accurate. Nothing is truly independent of anything else.

I think its a good starting point for a secular philosophy because it helps to diffuse anxieties over individuality and thus mortality. If consciousness is a continuum that a human organism dips into for the duration rather some temporary possession of that organism I think that loss takes on a more palatable character.

So long as it doesn’t trespass and make foundational claims that it can’t justify I think its a great concept.