Holism
We might be remiss if we did not mention the major
methodical nemesis of reductionism, holism. In some ways holism might be
thought of as the opposite of reductionism: often summarized as “the whole is
greater than the sum of its parts,” the relation of the parts to the whole is
such that the individual parts do not explain the state of the whole. This
includes aspects of emergent properties that can’t be reduced to the parts that
produce it. This latter formulation is the Cousin of holism, nonseperablity.
This is the idea that the state of the parts do not explain the state of the
whole.[1]
Holism as a mythodological thesis can best be understood as the idea that “the
best way to study the behavior of a complex system is to treat it as a whole.”[2]
Holism may also be a metaphysical thesis. In that sense it’s about the relation
of the whole to laws that govern it and the independence of the law from the
individual parts. There are three types of metaphysical holism:
Ontological
Holism: Some objects are not wholly composed of basic physical parts.
Property Holism: Some objects
have properties that are not determined by physical properties of their basic
physical parts.
Nomological Holism: Some
objects obey laws that are not determined by fundamental physical laws
governing the structure and behavior of their basic physical parts.[3]
Apparently
most physicists are holists in methodological terms, but there are notable
exceptions. Both methodological and metaphysical versions of holism and
reductionism are assumed in different ways among physicists.
It is surprisingly difficult to find
methodological reductionists among physicists. The elementary particle
physicist Steven Weinberg, for example, is an avowed reductionist. He believes
that by asking any sequence of deeper and deeper why-questions one will arrive
ultimately at the same fundamental laws of physics. But this explanatory
reductionism is metaphysical in so far as he takes explanation to be an ontic
rather than a pragmatic category. On this view, it is not physicists but the
fundamental laws themselves that explain why “higher level” scientific
principles are the way they are. Weinberg (1992) explicitly distinguishes his
view from methodological reductionism by saying that there is no reason to
suppose that the convergence of scientific explanations must lead to a
convergence of scientific methods.[4]
Carl Popper rejected holism because it has a long standing
relationship with totalitarian thinking. In social terms the individual is
determined by the whole, social groupings play out on a massive scale.
According to the social holist individuals are formed by the social groupings
to which they belong.[5]
Popper was critical of holism for this reason, this doesn’t mean that physicist
using holism as a methodological tool think in a totalitarian fashion. It’s a
matter of how you look at it. The reductionst reducing everything to one thing
is totalitarian. The reductionist move of losing phenomena of religious
experience and categorizing such experiences which they have never had is
totalitarian.
We clearly
see philosophical implications and repercussions in these matters. In physics
science interfaces with philosophy to such a degree its hard to tell where one
ends and the other begins. It would seem that what is needed a sharper focus on
the use of reductionism/holism as a methodology and better fences between
philosophy and physics. The problem the spreading ideology of scientism, that
seems to detract from any respect for philosophy, while ransacking its territory.
One commentator and blogger wrties:
I don’t know what’s
the matter with physicists these days. It used to be that they were an
intellectually sophisticated bunch, with the likes of Einstein and Bohr doing
not only brilliant scientific research, but also interested, respectful of, and
conversant in other branches of knowledge, particularly philosophy. These days
it is much more likely to encounter physicists like Steven Weinberg or Stephen
Hawking, who merrily go about dismissing philosophy for the wrong reasons, and
quite obviously out of a combination of profound ignorance and hubris (the two
often go together, as I’m sure Plato would happily point out). The latest such
bore is Lawrence Krauss, of Arizona State
University.[6]
This is no mystery but what we’ve been observing. There is a
tendency even among “regular science” or shall we say “real science” to infuse
scientific work with philosophical assumptions. The scientistic/reductionist
mentality has fomented the notion that science is the only form of knowledge.
Those who take his credo seriously are assaulting real philosophy to clear it
out of the way so they can make room for their ideology. If this is the only
form of knowledge it’s proponents are clearing away all the non knowledge. The only
problem this only knowledge is made up of different approaches to philosophy
and other disciplines.
This is by no means an exhaustive account of holism. It’s
very complex and just doesn’t allow for streamlined summary. There’s just too
much there to justice to the topic. I would be remiss if I didn’t discuss
briefly one upshot of holism which is downward causation.
Downward Causation
Systems
theory has been construed as anti-reductionism. In this stance it says “the
whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” Reductionism says that we can know
the nature of the whole by knowing the nature of the parts, because the whole
is nothing else but the sum of the parts and can be reduced to the parts. The
basic assumption of systems theory in its anti-reductionist stance is that
because the whole has emergent properties it is more than the sum of its parts
thus it can’t be reduced to the parts. This means that mind can’t be reduced to
brain. “Emergence” is sometimes a veg idea thus some thinkers prefer to call it
“downward causation.”[7]
Downward causation is the opposite of the reductionist premise: “The behavior
of the parts is determined by the behavior of the whole.”[8]
“Top-down causation refers to the
effects on components of organized systems that cannot be fully analyzed in
terms of component-level behavior but instead requires reference to the
higher-level system itself.”[9]
There are
five types of downward causation or “top-down” causation: (1) Algorithmic top
down causation; (2) Non adaptive information control; (3) adaptive selection;
(4) adaptive information control; (5) Intelligent top down.[10]
Random processes allow all of these forms of causation to work at the same time
without negating other causal processes. Each of these five forms of causation
takes place in the human brain.[11]
As an explanation of number one, (1) Algorithmic: Ellis tells us that “physics
is the basic science underlying physical reality, characterized by mathematical
descriptions that allow predictions of physical behavior.”[12]
He raises the question are other forms of causation merely epiphenomenal
grounded in purely physical causation? This is the view of strong reductionsits.
He argues that the other forms of causation do exist in the real world and that
they are acting within the framework provided by Aristotle of the four kinds of
causes. He gives a table that provides a simplified scheme of hierarchy of
levels of reality. “Each lower level underlies what happens at each higher
level in terms of causation.” Level 1: particle physics, level 2: atomic
physics, level 3: chemistry, Level 4: Biochemistry, level 5:, cell biology,
level 6:, physiology, level 7: psychology. Level 8:
Sociology/Economics/politics.[13]
(2)
Downward Causation also contains
Other dierections.
But downward causation does not assert that the only
direction of causation is downward. There is causation both ways; the whole is
to some extent limited to the parts and vice versa. The example that Heylighen
uses is that of a snow flake. Snow flakes all contain a six point similarity
but within that similarity, which is the whole because it’s universally found,
each crystal contains it’s totally individual shape. The shape is the result of
the chemical composition of water molecules but the shape is confined to the
whole.[14]
The appearance of this "two way causation" can be explained in
the following way. Imagine a complex dynamic system. The trajectories of the
system through its state space are constrained by the "laws" of the
dynamics. These dynamics in general determine a set of "attractors": regions in
the state space the system can enter but not leave. However, the initial state
of the system, and thus the attractor the system will eventually reach is not
determined. The smallest fluctuations can push the system either in the one
attractor regime or the other. However, once an attractor is reached, the
system loses its freedom to go outside the attractor, and its state is strongly
constrained.
Now equate the dynamics with the rules governing the molecules, and the
attractor with the eventual crystal shape. The dynamics to some degree
determines the possible attractors (e.g. you cannot have a crystal with a
7-fold symmetry), but which attractor will be eventually reached is totally
unpredictable from the point of view of the molecules. It rather depends on
uncontrollable outside influences. But once the attractor is reached, it
strictly governs the further movement of the molecules.
The same principle applies to less rigid, mechanistic systems such as
living organisms. You cannot have organisms whose internal functioning flouts
the rules of physics and chemistry. However, the laws of physics are completely
insufficient to determine which shapes or organizations will evolve in the
living world. Once a particular biological organization has emerged, it will
strongly constrain the behavior of its components.
For example, the coding of amino
acids by specific triplets of bases in the DNA is not determined by any
physical law. A given triplet might as well be translated into a multitude of
other amino acids than the one chosen in the organisms we know. But evolution
happens to have selected one specific "attractor" regime where the
coding relation is unambiguously fixed, and transgressions of that coding will
be treated as translation errors and therefore eliminated by the cell's repair
mechanisms. [15]
Downward causation extends from a level above a given system
downward to affect that system. When the direction of causal influence extends
from beyond the system downward to affect the system we have downward
causation. That means the system can’t be explained totally in terms of its
individual parts. In terms of consciousness it means consciousness can’t be
explained entirely in terms of brain chemistry.[16]
Cartesian dualism envisioned only two levels to reality but in modern terms
modern emergantism pictures the world in multiple levels. The Cartesian levels
were consciousness and extension, but…
…In contemporary emergentism the world
is pictured in terms of a multilayered structure, with microphysical entities
at the bottom and with higher-level entities (such as molecules, cells,
organisms, and social groups) being mereologically composed of these
lower-level entities, yet characterized by a set of properties distinctive of
the relevant higher level. In a way, so-called nonreductive physicalism, which
more or less became the received view in the philosophy of mind of the last
quarter of the twentieth century, may be seen as nothing but a modern
application of classical emergentism within the philosophy of mind. Although it
holds that, ontologically speaking, all there is are physical entities and
mereological aggregates thereof, it argues that psychological properties are irreducibly
distinct from the underlying physical and biological properties.[17]
There are
two other major examples ideological reductionism: (1) Brain/mind; mind is
reducible to brain function. (2) Determinism; free will reducible to an
illusion by determinism.
Summary and Conclusion:
Reductionism
is a valid scientific methodology, but it is more than that. Science itself is infused
with ideological and philosophical implication. There is no pure human endeavor
that is all knowledge and no politics. Reductionism is basically traceable to
the Greeks and implies a metaphysics that would reduce all reality to one
thing: in modern time in the scientistic circles that one thing can only be
science. This philosophical tendency issues forth in rhetorical strategies that
empirical tricks of reducing, such as labeling the loosing the phenomena. The
alternative is holism, which offers philosophical alternative as well as
methodological and rhetorical options. Holism opens up our thinking to a vast possibility
of multidimensional reality. It offers explanations of emergent properties and
top down causation that rule out much of the reductionist’s repertoire.
[1] Healey, Richard,
"Holism and Nonseparability in Physics", The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 Edition), Edward N.
Zalta (ed.), URL = .visited
4/25/2012
[2] ibid
[3] ibid
[5] Thornton,
op cit URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/#SocPolThoCriHisHol
[6] Massimo Piglicci,
“Rationally Speaking: “Lawrence
Krauss: Antoher Physcist With an Anti-Philosophy Complex.” Truth from
Argument Among Friends. Blog book Review URL: http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.ca/2012/04/lawrence-krauss-another-physicist-with.html
visisted 4/27/2012
[7] Francis Heylighen,
“Downward Causation.” Principia Cybernetica web On line resource. Sept 15, 1995, summarizing work of
Donald T. Campbell 1974. Heylighen is research Professor at Free University of
Brussels and director of Global Brain Institiute. URL: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/DOWNCAUS.html visited 5/9/12
- see also Campbell D.T. (1990): "Levels of Organization, Downward Causation, and the Selection-Theory Approach to Evolutionary Epistemology", in: Scientific Methodology in the Study of Mind: evolutionary epistemology, E. Tobach and G. Greenberg (ed.), (Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ), p. 1-17.
- Campbell D.T. (1974): "'Downward causation' in Hierarchically Organized Biological Systems", in: Studies in the Philosophy of Biology, F.J. Ayala & T. Dobzhansky (ed.), (Macmillan Press), p. 179-186
[8] ibid
[9] Mary Ann Meyers “Top Down
Causation: An integrating theme within and across the sciences.” A symposium by the John Templeton foundation,
Participnats from the Royal Society,
Contact Mary Ann Meyers Senior Fellow, 2010, website: URL http://humbleapproach.templeton.org/Top_Down_Causation/index.html visited sept 25,2012.
[10] George F.R. Ellis, “Top
Down Causation and The Human Brain,” Downward Causation and the Neurobiology
of Free Will: Understanding Complex Systems. Berlin,
Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, Ed.Nancy Murphy, George F.R. Ellis, Timothy
O. O’Connor, 2009, 63
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid., Table 4.1
[14] Meyers, “top Down
Causation…” Symposium, Op. Cit.
[15] ibid.
[16] Gale Cengage, “Downward
causation,” Encyclopedia of Science and Religion. New
York: Macmillan, Wentzel Van Huyssteen edit 2003.
quoted in Enotes, Downward Causatoin, on line resource for teachers:
URL: http://www.enotes.com/downward-causation-reference/downward-causation visited 5/10/12
[17] Ibid.
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