Re: The Meaning of Holism LO1685

JOHN N. WARFIELD (jwarfiel@osf1.gmu.edu)
Sun, 18 Jun 1995 08:52:27 -0400 (EDT)

Replying to LO1675 --

Responding to L01675,

having lived with "holism" in some learned societies for several decades,
here is one way to look at in an educational context:

American society displays two remarkable traits: (1) Dichotomize
everything and assume that it's gotta be this or that, but not both and
(2) Climb on every fad train that comes along and ride it until another
one surfaces.

I make habit of defying these two traits at every opportunity, whether
there is any real merit in doing so, because they are almost always easy
to complain about and build arguments in the opposite direction.

Over the decades, there has been evolving, and continues, a group of
people who keep arguing that education should be holistic, and that the
disciplines are ruining everything by maintaining their narrow, vertical
orientations. On the other hand, people in the disciplines often complain
about the shallowness of the advocates of the systems movement, full of
praise for holism, and iteratively denouncing reductionism.

HERE IS A COUNTER MOVE: Given the complexity of modern society, and the
deep philosophical revolt against received doctrine, both the disciplines
and the broad-looking, holistic community should share this objective: TO
GET MUCH BETTER AT WHAT THEY ARE DOING, AND TO BENEFIT FROM ONE ANOTHER.

CASE IN POINT: Do the people in holistic medicine buy cars, as opposed to
integrated systems of auto parts? Would they fail to replace a bad tire,
on the grounds that it shows a tendency to reductionism? Would someone
fail to try to take polio vaccine on the grounds that it doesn't also
prevent cancer?

CASE IN POINT: Do the reductionists really believe that nobody should be
concerned about the health care system, because it's not as easy to
analyze or design as counting eggs that a hen lays?

The great university of the 21st century will probably come to recognize
these two facts: (a) the infrastructure of the university is totally
aimed at the image of one-hour lectures about disciplinary subjects,
favoring the reductionists, while (b) the need to augment the disciplines
with broadly-based, powerful, holistic-type analysis goes unsupported,
with little or no attention given to the kind of working environment
required for that purpose--an environment, by the way, that would also be
very supportive of efforts to organize disciplinary knowledge in better
ways.

By the way, none of this is intended to respond negatively to anything
Sheryl said--what she said was quite interesting to me--but instead to
discuss the said side of the great American addictions.

--
JOHN WARFIELD
Jwarfiel@osf1.gmu.edu