CHAPTER VI 



SOME FUNCTIONS AND CATEGORIES OF HOLISM 



Summary. — Avoiding as far as possible philosophical categories 

 and confining ourselves to scientific view-points, we shall now try 

 to consider more closely the concept of the whole and the results 

 flowing from it. We have already seen that the concept of the 

 whole means not a general tendency but a type of structure, a 

 scheme or framework, which, however, can only be filled with con- 

 crete details by actual experience. A whole is then a synthesis or 

 structure of parts in which the synthesis becomes ever closer so as 

 i materially to affect the character of the functions or activities 

 which become correspondingly more unified (or holistic). It is, 

 however, important to realise that the whole is not some tertium 

 quid over and above the parts which compose it; it is the parts 

 in their intimate union, and the new reactions which result from 

 that union. But in that union the parts themselves are more or 

 less affected and altered towards the type represented by the 

 union, so that the whole is evidenced in a change of parts as well 

 as a change of resulting functions. 



The whole thus appears as a marked power of regulation and 

 co-ordination in respect of both the structure and the functioning 

 of the parts. This is probably the most striking feature of organ- 

 isms — that they involve a balanced correlation of organs and 

 functions. All the various activities of the several parts and 

 organs seem directed to central ends; there is thus co-operation 

 and unified action of the organism as a whole instead of the 

 separate mechanical activities of the parts. The whole thus 

 becomes synonymous with unified (or holistic) action. 



This intense synthesis and unification in the action of a whole 

 involves a corresponding transformation of concepts and categories. 

 Thus while in a mechanical aggregate each part acts as a separate 

 cause, and the resultant activity is a sum of the component activ- 

 ities; in organic activity or the activity of the whole this separate 

 action or causation disappears in a real synthesis or unity which 

 makes the components unrecognisable in the unified result. Yet 

 even here we must realise that the whole does not act as a sep- 

 arate cause, distinct from its parts, no more than it is itself some- 

 thing additional over and above its parts. Holism is of the parts 



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