From: Ian Goddard (igoddard@erols.com)
Date: Fri Mar 06 1998 - 05:23:38 MST
Brian D Williams (duening@oss1.cba.uh.edu) wrote:
>Ian Goddard writes that the mystical notion of "holism" is more
>likely the "Truth" because it doesn't impose the boundaries that the
>mind uses to make its way in the world.
>
>I find this whole line of thinking to be unconvincing. Centuries of
>thought have tried to convince people that one or another point of
>view is "Truth" and everything else is mere illusion. The notion
>that there is some "Super" truth behind mere, everyday truth is a
>religious notion that serves no purpose whatever.
>
>Why should we think that holism is more real than boundaryism?
IAN: Why should we think that boundaries are more
real than holism? What I'm getting at is maybe
because holism is winning the truth test, one
suddenly thinks "Ah, who needs truth anyway?
'The truth' is a religious concept." Which
constructs a scenario in which a holistic
paradigm cannot be allowed to prevail.
That may not be your intention at all,
but in the set of all counters, it
tends to fit that interpretation.
If atomism seems to win the truth test,
then religious holist says, "Ah, truth
is logical, who needs it?" Inversely,
if holism seems to be winning the truth
test, atomists will say, "Ah, truth is
religious, who needs it?" In short, each
attempts to prevent the opposing view from
prevailing by redefining the standards upon
which "the correct" philosophy is measured.
I'm probably unfairly lumping you into the
category of "die-hard atomist defenders,"
which is such relative to other categories.
>Maybe holism is an artificial construct of the mind.
IAN: The universe is one whole entity with a
myriad interconnected entities. In short, the
universe -- the sum of reality -- is invariably
holistic by its nature, with or without our
ideological constructions. Our constructs
may be more or less like what the physical
universe is like. I want it to be moe like
what reality is, and it is like holistic.
>It may, in fact, be
>impossible to think of anything at all without thinking of at least
>two things that are some somehow related and interacting. Try, I
>mean, really try, to think of just one thing without it being related
>to anything else at all. What could you possibly be thinking of?
IAN: The structure of thoughts can act as a
model of the universe. Just as we cannot think
of A free from relation to ~A, a universe that
is all composed of 100% of one feature, devoid
of any complementary features, is a nonuniverse,
it cannot even have a single atom, since the
identity structure of an atom requires that
there be an area that is particle/wave (A)
and an area that is not particle/wave (~A)
in which the particle/wave exists as it is.
The concept, "100% of one feature" is an absurdity,
since "one feature" requires a complementary feature,
thus one feature implies and requires two features,
and that is holism. I posit that logic maps truth.
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