The Web of Life: Fritjof Capra 2

 Spirituality

My deepest belief is that spirituality is essentially a thrust within the human soul to connect with others and with whatever is the principle of life.  Capra gives the following descriptive definition which is quite similar but far more complete:

“When the concept of the human spirit is understood as the mode of consciousness in which the individual feels a sense of belonging, of connectedness, to the cosmos as a whole, it becomes clear that ecological awareness is spiritual in its deepest essence.  It is, therefore, not surprising that the emerging new vision of reality based on deep ecological awareness is consistent with the so-called "perennial philosophy" of spiritual traditions, whether we talk about the spirituality of Christian mystics, that of Buddhists, or the philosophy or cosmology underlying the Native American traditions.” (p. 7)

Capra underscores the paradigm shift in our modern world from HIERARCHY to NETWORK in social organizations.  This is where the Roman Catholic hierarchical model of the Church has gone so wrong.  They are still operating out of the old worldview of centralized control and power.  No wonder we have had the horrible and shameful episodes of the covering up of clerical child sex abuse.  This most definitely is an horrific consequence of blind allegiance to an outmoded worldview.  NETWORK is a central metaphor in ecology, and a far more holistic and embracing term this is. Another way of stating this, then, is to state that there has been a shift from a rather "neutral" understanding of physics, chemistry and biology to a dynamic understanding of the LIFE SCIENCES, stressing the interconnectivity and complexity of the very mystery life is.

The traditional emphasis on parts is consequently now out of favour.  It has been called the mechanistic approach, the reductionist approach or the atomistic approach.  Indeed, this was the worldview or the weltanschauung that came to the fore after the demise, or at least the eclipse in certain quarters, of the Medieval worldview roughly around the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  This more traditional scientific view saw the world essentially as a machine. 

In the twentieth century there was a concerted effort to holism in certain areas of the natural and human sciences in order to transcend the mechanistic approach.  The emphasis on the whole has been named variously as holistic, organismic or ecological.  Overall, this holistic thrust or trend in science may be called systemic thinking.  In the book under review, Dr Fritjof Capra uses "systemic" and "ecological" synonymously.  The first term is just more technical than the second, but their meaning is the same.  Essentially, systems thinking was pioneered by the biologists, who emphasized the view of living organisms as integrated wholes.

Dr Capra in The Web of Life reminds us that Immanuel Kant was the first to teach modern humankind in the wake of the Enlightenment that organisms, in contrast to machines, are self-reproducing and self-organizing wholes. This philosopher, Capra argues, thereby became the first philosopher to use the term "self-organization" as applied to organisms.  Indeed, Kant used this term in a profoundly modern way.   This profoundly modern way is what inspired the thought of the likes of Dr James Lovelock who invented the Gaia hypothesis.  Therefore, in the simplest of sentences, then, the message of Capra and Lovelock may be stated thus: "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts."

If we were to draw a line down the centre of a page and write the title "Parts" on one side of the line and "Whole" on the other side and then brainstorm the words or terms or ideas or concepts that come into our minds under the relevant column we might get something like this.  The brainstorm below is my attempt to get at what Dr Fritjof Capra is underscoring in chapter 2 of The Web of Life which is entitled "From the Parts to the Whole".

Parts

Whole

Machines Mechanistic Reductionist Atomistic Plainness Simplicity Simplify Substance Soulless/Lifeless Separateness Lack of organisation   Ditto Measured/Quantified Matter Cartesian Dualism (Separation) Quantity Observation Cost Prosaic Exoteric Problem Reason Inert Planet Chemistry  Mechanistic Biology Parts Thinking Newtonian Physics Connections Going it alone

Organisms Organismic (W)holist Ecological Pattern Complexity Complexify Shape/Form Soulful/Life-giving Unity Self-organising (Kant) Self-completing (Entelechy: Aristotle) Immeasurable/Unquantifiable Mind Body-Mind (Unity) Quality Experience Value Poetic Esoteric (Mystical) Mystery Heart Living Planet Biochemistry/Vitalism (& Entelechy: Hans Driesch) Organismic Biology  Systems Thinking (Paul Weiss) Quantum Physics Interconnections Networking

 

I will finish this post by saying a little about Systems Thinking, and if there are still any readers out there, this thankfully will be my last post on Fritjof Capra.  His thoughts are indeed deep and complex.  I cannot say I totally understand him, but I enjoy reading his writings and wrestling with his ideas.

Systems Thinking

Basically, systems thinking is all about connectedness, relationships and contexts.  According to systems thinking, the essential properties of any living system or organism are properties which belong to the whole and not to any individual parts as such.  These properties arise from the interactions and relationships between the individual parts in the organism.  Dr Capra highlights Paul Alfred Weiss (1898-1989), the Austrian biologist, as one of the founders of this school of thinking.  Indeed, the great shock of twentieth-century science, he argues, has been that systems cannot be understood by analysis.  The properties of the parts are not intrinsic properties but can only be understood in the context of the larger whole.  Once again, in the succinct words of Fritjof Capra:

Thus, the relationship between the parts and the whole has been reversed.  In the systems approach, the properties of the parts can be understood only from the organization of the whole.  Accordingly, systems thinking does not concentrate on basic building-blocks but rather on the basic principles of organization…. Systems thinking is contextual, which is the opposite to analytical thinking.  Analysis means taking something apart in order to understand it; systems thinking means putting it into the context of the larger whole. (p 29-30)

Finally, if you are into the thought of Professor Capra the following article by him is worth consulting: Here

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