CHAPTER XII 



THE HOLISTIC UNIVERSE 



Summary. — The fundamental, seminal character of the concept 

 of Holism is bound to affect our general views of the nature of the 

 universe, our Weltanschauung, and this chapter deals with this 

 wider aspect of Holism. 



Holism has been presented in the foregoing chapters as the ulti- 

 mate synthetic, ordering, organising, regulative activity in the 

 universe which accounts for all the structural groupings and syn- 

 theses in it, from the atom and the physico-chemical structures, 

 though the cell and organisms, through Mind in animals, to Per- 

 sonality in man. The all-pervading and ever-increasing character 

 of synthetic unity or wholeness in these structures leads to the 

 concept of Holism as the fundamental activity underlying and 

 co-ordinating all others, and to the view of the universe as a 

 Holistic Universe. 



On a strict and narrow view Science may consider the concept 

 of Holism as extra-scientific, as giving a metaphysical and not a 

 scientific explanation of things. But this would be a mistake for 

 three reasons. In the first place, the conclusion to which Science 

 is pointing, namely, that the whole universe, inorganic as well as 

 organic, is the expression of cosmic Evolution, necessitates a 

 ground-plan which will formulate and explain this vast scientific 

 scheme of things. Mere pre-occupation with detailed mechanisms 

 will no longer suit the immensely enlarged scope of present-day 

 Science. In the second place, Science has already had to assume 

 such ultra-scientific entities as, for instance, the ether of space, 

 as necessary to give a coherent explanation even of purely physical 

 phenomena. And the correlation of the physical, and organic, and 

 psychical in one vast scheme of Evolution similarly necessitates 

 much more widely operative factors than have been hitherto recog- 

 nized. Holism is far more necessary for cosmic Evolution than 

 was the ether for light transmission. In the third place. Holism 

 is essentially no more ultra-scientific than are life and mind ; it is 

 simply a wider concept than either and is the genus of which they 

 are the species. And it enables all the evolutionary phenomena 

 of Nature to be co-ordinated under and traced to the same opera- 

 tive factor. 



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