Holism

Possibilities and Problems

Christian McMillan, Roderick Main, David Henderson, Christian McMillan, Roderick Main, David Henderson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000768282
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychoanalysis
• Index: Psychology

Holism: Possibilities and Problems brings together leading contributors in a ground-breaking discussion of holism. The terms 'holism' and 'holistic' arouse strong emotional responses in contemporary culture, whether this be negative or positive, and the essays in this interdisciplinary collection probe, each in its own way, the possibilities and problems inherent in thinking holistically.

Christian McMillan, Roderick Main and David Henderson bring together established academics and emerging scholars across subject areas and disciplinary approaches to reveal the multiplicity and complexity of issues involved in holism. Divided into four parts, the chapters determine key strands of thinking explicitly or implicitly underpinning contemporary holistic thought, including what ethical conclusions might most reasonably be drawn from such thought. Accessible and diverse, this extensive volume contains chapters from the perspective of history, ecology, psychotherapy, poetry, mythology, and an especially strong representation of continental philosophy and Jungian depth psychology. Due to its multi-disciplinary nature, the book represents an unparalleled discussion of the meanings and implications of holism.

Written by an innovative and international calibre of contributors, this pioneering collection will be essential reading for practitioners in depth psychology and scholars of Jungian studies, as well as academics and students of philosophy, religious studies, spirituality, history and the history of ideas. The book is a rich resource for the enhancement of critical reflection among all those with an interest in holism.

Part I

History and contexts

1

How do we think in terms of wholes? Holistic voices and visions After World War II

Linda Sargent Wood

NASA’s first photos of earth shifted our vantage point. “Earthrise” especially captured the imagination in its shot of earth as a bright blue and white sphere against the pitch-black setting of space. Taken in 1968, a year of tremendous tumult around the world, the image gave humanity a startling view. Physicist Stephen Hawking called this new perspective one of the “great revelations of the Space Age” and an invitation to “see ourselves as a whole.” For him, the image of earth from space reinforced unity and beckoned us to act accordingly: “One planet. One human race. We are here together and we need to live together with tolerance and respect. We must become global citizens.” Our only boundaries, Hawking mused, are the borders we create.¹ Such messages resonated in 1970 when historic numbers gathered on the mall in Washington, DC, to celebrate the first Earth Day. Environmentalists spoke of ecological wholeness and harmony and encouraged all to think globally and act locally. This world—sea, soil, and sky—was one ecosystem, one society. An entire generation, one college student exclaimed, was “seeing, thinking, feeling wholes.”² NASA photographs only seemed to confirm this; the planet was one, interconnected whole.³

Earth Day offered a celebration of holistic ideas in a time when holistic sensibilities reverberated throughout significant subsections of post–World War II America with particular power. This manifestation of holism—a view that held that reality can only be understood as a whole, can only be comprehended by focusing on relationships between the parts and the whole—emphasized unity, interdependencies, integration, and community.⁴

One popular holistic articulation came from zoologist and nature writer Rachel Carson. In her successful trilogy of books on the sea she wrote about a “web of life” that connected humans to the world around them and argued that actions taken in one segment of the ecosystem had dramatic consequences elsewhere. She used this holistic reasoning in her 1962 book, Silent Spring, to chastise the chemical industry. Pesticides sprayed over croplands seep into groundwater and move throughout the ecosystem, harming the entire environment in the process. “In the ecological web of life,” the zoologist explained, “nothing existed alone.”⁵ Silent Spring set off a storm of controversy, shot to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, and ignited the modern environmental movement. Thousands accepted her message, joined environmental groups, and lobbied for clean air and water.⁶

Carson thought in terms of “wholes.” She focused on entire systems. Her training in biology taught her to examine individual species with great care but she focused on how one species was affected by another and how actions in one place could have long lasting consequences elsewhere. Her interest was in the big picture and she was not alone in environmental circles and elsewhere.

In the 1960s and 1970s, holistic conceptions resounded throughout significant subsections of American culture with particular power, changing the ways people understood themselves and their relationship with other people and the environment, drove social reform, and altered conceptions of science and religion. Making connections between spraying apple trees with chemicals and no birds singing was only one of the arenas where Americans embraced this train of thought.

Turning to structural engineer and futurist R. Buckminster Fuller reveals another holistic expression. A year after Carson broadcast her holistic world view in Silent Spring, Fuller published Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth and joined others in asking, “How do we think in terms of wholes?” To posit solutions to the problems we face, we can’t be specialists that only think in terms of parts, Fuller contended. We must eschew specialization and reductionistic approaches. We have to think of the whole system—the whole earth—and “make the world work for 100% of humanity…without ecological offense or damage to anyone.”⁷ In an age of plenty that was also fraught with division and disparity, he aimed to distribute resources fairly and to provide food and shelter for all. Through his speeches, books, maps, and businesses, he called for a just allocation of assets, an end to the Cold War, and more harmony between East and West. We must “explore ways to make it possible for anybody and everybody in the human family to enjoy the total Earth without … gaining advantage at the expense of another.”⁸

His innovative geodesic dome became part of his solution, as he fashioned the economical units to serve as everything from homes to stadiums, storage sheds to churches, greenhouses to planetariums. Geodesics offered an answer to worldwide housing shortages and more. Held together in synergetic wholeness, each part relying on neighboring parts for stability, geodesics became his holistic representation, a metaphor for the interdependency he found at the heart of his holistic philosophy. They were the embodiment of his belief that the machine belonged in the garden, his affirmation that the relationship between technology and nature was complementary. Both, he felt, had a place on this planet he dubbed “spaceship earth.” His proposed dome over New York City, though fantastic and impractical, offered a palpable way to control the climate.⁹

Fuller’s maps, sometimes flat representations, sometimes globes, also communicated his holistic vision. They, too, emphasized connections, interdependencies and oneness. Just as each part of his dome relied on adjacent parts to form the whole structure, so, too, he felt that each sea and land mass was crucial to the whole planet. Life magazine published a cut-out of one map with 20 different, separable triangles and instructions for assembling. Life called the map “pure invention” but readers responded enthusiastically. The issue sold a record-breaking 3 million copies. As a manipulable, it could be laid out flat or folded into a globe.¹⁰ There was no up, down, north, south, east, or west. The parts could be rearranged to give any region—or no region—center stage. Differing perspectives and interests could thus be highlighted. To encourage thinking of the globe as one comprehensive whole, Fuller’s maps could be arranged to line up the continents and showcase one stream of land. Conversely, his “One-Ocean World” map highlighted the interconnectedness of the earth’s water by showing it as one united body, dispelling assumptions of oceans as separate and isolated. He called his domes “world-around structures” to fit his global vision of “one world town.” By merging the dome and globe together in a “geoscope,” he depicted his idea of one global village.

Maps are abstracts that may be used as both models of and models for something, a tangible, objective reality or a vision.¹¹ Fuller’s maps did both, though they were largely visionary. He designed his maps to help others see as he did, that we are aboard one spaceship earth. We are one planet, one human race in a global village not divided by east and west or other human boundaries. Hawking’s words in 2015 echo such declarations.

Fuller attracted a sizeable following, even ones willing to listen to his six-hour lectures peppered with words he invented. His geodesics became colorful domiciles for counterculture enthusiasts as well as practical spaces for fairs, military operations, scientific experiments, and sporting events. His maps became a forum for playing his World Game—his antidote to Cold War military games—where people puzzled through ways to justly allocate resources and make peace.¹²

Other individuals from multiple socioeconomic and racial backgrounds joined Carson and Fuller in challenging their era’s most pressing problems and calling on holistic understandings to bring an end to mushroom clouds, military-industrial complexes, racial and gender discrimination, and inequities of wealth and power. To follow the story of this particular cultural response even further, several serve as illustrations of holism’s power in their own spheres of influence: civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.; French Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin; and psychologist Abraham Maslow.

While these five do not provide definitive renderings of holism in any kind of absolute sense, they do offer examples of holistic ideas in different fields of knowledge and highlight some of the ways that holism can be used and bent for various agendas. Together they comprise a small, yet suggestive, sampling of a broader cross-section of American society. Each spoke to similar concerns and offered complementary answers. Troubled by what seemed to them a fragmented world, they reprimanded a science that had led to atomic war. They balked at medical approaches that treated humans as parts, systems that compartmentalized life, and huge corporations that, in quest of profit, ignored their products’ harm. Some defied accepted social codes, rebelling against hierarchical distinctions of race and sex. With zeal, each strove to create a better world, infusing their spiritual values and holistic outlook into some of the century’s most powerful social movements: the counterculture, environmentalism, the struggle for racial and gender equality, and the push for alternative medicine. Holistic concepts provided an ethical framework and practical solutions for handling a variety of crises.

Though contested and controversial, their influence can be measured through their bestselling books; large turnouts at speeches, rallies, and marches; popular architectural d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• FM
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgement
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I History And Contexts
• Part II Analytical Psychology
• Part III Philosophy
• Part IV Practice And The Arts
• Index