Smuts’ Holism and Evolution

Holism and evolution 1927. Smuts’ notoriously inaccessible theory of evolution, building on and show-casing Keynes’ notion of uncertainty. Smuts made significant revisions and additions in later editions to reflect some of the details of the then current understanding. Not all of these now appear to be an improvement. The book is of most interest for its general approach, rather than its detail. Smuts went on to become the centennial president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, drawing on these ideas to characterise ‘modern science’.

Holism is a term introduced by Smuts, in contrast to individualism and wholism. In the context of evolution it emphasises co-evolution between parts and wholes, with neither being dominant.

“Back in the days of those Ancient Greeks, Aristotle (384-322BCE) gave us:

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts; (the composition law)
The part is more than a fraction of the whole. (the decomposition law)

Composition Laws” (From Derek Hitchins’ Systems World.)

Smuts noted that according to the popular view of evolution, one would expect organisms to become more and more adapted to their environmental niches, whereas they were more ‘adapted to adapt’, particularly mankind. There seemed to be inheritance of variability in offspring as whole as the more familiar inheritance of manifest characteristics, which suggested more sudden changes in the environment than had been assumed. This led Smuts to support research into the Wegner hypothesis (concerning continental drift) and the geographic origins of  life-forms. But Smuts is perhaps best known for his work towards the UN. In this connection he opines: ‘The real defeat for men … would be … to cease from striving … .‘

Preface to First Edition

It is my belief that Holism and the holistic point of view will prove important in their bearings on some of the main problems of science and philosophy, ethics, art and allied subjects. These bearings are, however, not fully discussed in this work, which is more of the nature of an introduction, and is concerned more with the laying of foundations than with the superstructure…
The old concepts and formulas are no longer adequate to express our modern outlook. …

[There is a] universal phenomenon, namely, the existence of wholes and the tendency towards wholes and wholeness in nature.

Preface to Second Edition

Holism is in its own way a groping towards the new light and to new points of view. And I cannot help feeling that if the full extent of its implications is realised, both science and philosophy will enter into a more favourable atmosphere for further advance.

I recognise that there is a Metaphysic or Logic of Holism which has still to be written … . Special reference is made to the important work of Professor A. N. Whitehead, who is partly influenced by Professors Alexander and Lloyd Morgan, and who is evidently wrestling with the same problem as myself, though from a different standpoint and on different lines. Even so, however, there is a striking similarity in the solutions suggested.

CHAPTER I THE REFORM OF FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS

We have accepted Evolution, but have failed to make the fundamental readjustment in our views which that acceptance involves. The old mechanical view- points persist, and Natural Selection itself has come to be looked upon as a mere mechanical factor. But this is wrong …  even Natural Selection has merely the appearance of a mechanical process, because it is viewed as a statistical average, from which the real character of struggle among the concrete individuals has been eliminated.

Nineteenth-century science went wrong mostly because of the hard and narrow concept of causation which dominated it. It was a fixed dogma that there could be no more in the effect than there was in the cause ; hence creativeness and real progress became impossible. The narrow concept of causation again arose from a wider intellectual error of abstraction, of narrowing down all concepts into hard definite contours and wiping out their indefinite surrounding ” fields.” …. we have outlived the utility of this procedure, and for further advance we have now to return to the more difficult but more correct view of the natural plasticity and fluidity of natural things and processes.

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One may say that the analytical character of thought has a far-reaching effect in obscuring the nature of reality, which has to be carefully guarded against. In order to understand and explore any concrete situation, we analyse it into its factors or elements, whose separate operation and effects are then studied, in isolation so to say. This procedure is not only quite legitimate, but the only one possible, if we wish to understand and investigate the complex groupings of nature. It is the analytical method which science has applied with such outstanding success ; and but for this analysis of a complex phenomenon or situation into its separate elements and the study of these in isolation, it is fair to assume that very little progress would have been possible in the understanding of Nature with all her obscure processes. When the isolated elements or factors of the complex situation have been separately studied, they are recombined in order to reconstitute the original situation. Two sources of error here become possible. In the first place, in the original analysis something may have escaped, so that in the reconstruction we have no longer all the original elements present, but something less. I have already shown how ” fields ” escape in the idea of things and even in concepts. The same happens in regard to the elements into which a situation is analysed. And it is certain that in every case of analysis and reconstitution of a concrete situation something escapes which makes the artificial situation as reconstructed different from the original situation which was to be explored and explained. An element of more or less error has entered. This may be called the error of analysis.

CHAPTER V GENERAL CONCEPT OF HOLISM

Two conceptions of genesis or development have prevailed. The one regards all reality as given in form and substance at the beginning, either actually or implicitly, and the subsequent history as merely the unfolding, explication, evolution, of this implicit content. This view puts creation in the past and makes it predetermine the whole future; all fresh initiative, novelty or creativeness is consequently banned from a universe so created or evolved. The other view posits a minimum of the given at the beginning, and makes the process of Evolution creative of reality. Evolution on this view is really creative and not merely explicative of what was given before; it involves the creative rise not only of new forms or groupings, but even of new materials in the process of Evolution. This is the view of Evolution to-day commonly held, and it marks a revolution in thought. It releases the present and the future from the bondage of the past, and makes freedom an inherent character of the universe.

[We] notice the fundamental holistic characters as a unity of parts which is so close and intense as to be more than the sum of its parts ; which not only gives a particular conformation or structure to the parts, but so relates and determines them in their synthesis that their functions are altered ; the synthesis affects and determines the parts, so that they function towards the ” whole ” ; and the whole and the parts, therefore reciprocally influence and determine each other, and appear more or less to merge their individual characters : the whole is in the parts and the parts are in the whole, and this synthesis of whole and parts is reflected in the holistic character of the functions of the parts as well as of the whole.

Holism is not only creative but self-creative, and its final structures are far more holistic than its initial structures. Natural wholes are always composed of parts ; in fact the whole is not something additional to the parts, but is just the parts in their synthesis, which may be physico-chemical or organic or psychical or personal. As Holism is a process of creative synthesis, the resulting wholes are not static but dynamic, evolutionary, creative. Hence Evolution has an ever-deepening inward spiritual holistic character; and the wholes of Evolution and the evolutionary process itself can only be understood in reference to this fundamental character of wholeness. This is a universe of whole-making. The explanation of Nature can therefore not be purely mechanical ; and the mechanistic concept of Nature has its place and justification only in the wider setting of Holism. In its organic application, in particular, the ” whole ” will be found a much more useful term in science than ” life/’ and will render the prevailing mechanistic interpretation largely unnecessary. A natural whole has its ” field,” and the concept of fields will be found most important in this connection also. Just as a ” thing ” is really a synthesised ‘ ‘ event ‘ ‘ in the system of Relativity, so an organism is really a unified, synthesised section of history, which includes not only its present but much of its past and even some of its future. An organism can only be explained by reference to its past and its future as well as its present; the central structure is not sufficient and literally has not enough in it to go round in the way of explanation ; the conception of the field therefore becomes necessary and will be found fruitful in biology and psychology no less than in physics.

CHAPTER VII MECHANISM AND HOLISM

Mechanism is a type of structure where the working parts maintain their identity and produce their effects individually, so that the activity of the structure is, at least theoretically, the mathematical result of the individual activities of the parts. … There is a measure of Mechanism everywhere, and there is a measure of Holism everywhere ; but the Holism gains on the Mechanism in the course of Evolution, it becomes more and more as Mechanism becomes less and less with the advance. Holism is the more fundamental activity, and we may therefore say that Mechanism is an earlier, cruder form of Holism; the more Holism there is in structure, the less there is of the mechanistic character … .

The tendency for science has as a rule been to look upon the earlier physico-chemical structures as dominant, and upon the later holistic elements of life and mind as essentially unreal or as having only an apparent reality. Science looks upon the physical realm as a closed system dependent only on physical laws, which leave no opening anywhere for the active intervention of non-material entities like life and mind. On this view the activity and causality of life and mind are therefore at bottom essentially illusory.

In reply to mechanistic Science it can be shown that the holistic factors of life and mind do not interfere with the closed physical system, and that a proper understanding of the laws of Thermodynamics permits of the immanent activity of a factor of Selectiveness and Self-direction, such as life or mind, without any derogation from those laws.

CHAPTER IX MIND AS AN ORGAN OF WHOLES

The individual springs from universal Holism, and all his experience and knowledge ultimately tend towards the character of regulative order and universality. Thus knowledge assumes in the first instance the form of an empirical order, as a system of common sense. /Gradually the discrepancies of this system are eliminated and knowledge approximates to science, to a scientific conceptual order, in which concepts and principles beyond empirical experience are assumed to underlie the world of experience.

CHAPTER XII THE HOLISTIC UNIVERSE

There is a passage, a process, a progress, but its characters can only be determined by a study of the facts of the passage. It may turn out to be merely a movement of combinations and groupings ; or it may turn out to be an unfolding, explication and filling out, an evolutio in the stricter sense; or it may turn out to be a real creative Evolution such as we have seen it to be. Real Evolution requires other concepts besides those of Action and structure ; and these concepts can only be derived from experience. Thus the actual creativeness of Evolution is a conclusion not so much from theory as from the empirical facts. And the exact nature of this creativeness is unknown in some respects and remains a problem for the future to solve.

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The rise and self-perfection of wholes in the Whole is the slow but unerring process and goal of this Holistic universe.

My Comments

Holism is sometimes thought to mean that ‘the whole is more than the sum of its parts’ in the sense of ‘wholism’, with the suggestion that the whole is more important than the parts, and maybe even that the parts should be subjugated to the ‘whole’.

In his presidential speech to the British Association for the Advancement of Science Smuts perhaps better stated things as:

The part in the whole is no longer the same as the part in isolation.

Parts of a composite may be said to have characteristics and activity and the parts may be structured, but what Smuts calls ‘wholes’ cannot be understood by analysing them in this way: something else ’emerges’ to make the composite more than a structured aggregation. This is not to say that every composite is a whole, only that there is a tendency for composites to become wholes.

In his speech Smuts also said:

We seem to pass from one level to another in the evolution of the universe, with different units, different behaviours, and calling for different concepts and laws.

Thus we may characterise a ‘whole’ as some composite that cannot be ‘measured’ in the same units as its parts or understood using the same concepts as it parts.

More to follow.

See also

Presidential speech to the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

Ian Stewart, Peter Allen Du Plessis

David Marsay