Holism is usually contrasted with the reductionism usually associated with the rise of Western science. It is indeed often motivated by what many perceive to be the insufficiencies of an atomistic or reductionist approach to metaphysical and ethical propositions, in that it doesn’t correspond with how we experience reality or the needs that the current environmental crisis sets for us. Freya Mathews states that “That we need cosmological rehabilitation is drastically apparent. Is the time for a shift to the alternative—monistic—metaphysical archetype” (2006, p. 31).
Holism’s central doctrine is that wholes are greater then merely the sum of parts. At a higher level of things, there are properties and qualities that cannot be explained by its cumulative parts. In terms of mereology, this is no radical proposition. Reductionism is not a dominant view throughout the history of philosophy. Both Aristotelians and Platonists will e.g. be well acquainted with the concept of form informing a substance, as something distinct to the constituting matter that participates or is conjoined with form in a substance. But holism in an environmental sense then, also means that a species is not merely a set of individuals, but an entity in itself, that can have certain qualities such as being “endangered” (Nelson 2010).
Holism is dominant in the field of environmental ethics, which has been growing since the 1970s. However, the term seems to lack clarity, and is being used in widely differing ways among its prominent proponents. After briefly discussing Michael P. Nelson’s mapping of the types of holisms usually discussed in environmental ethics, I will further investigate how Freya Mathews in particular sketches her holistic worldview.
Nelson proposes to analyze the differences between holisms along three lines: (1) ethical, (2) epistemological and (3) ontological/metaphysical. Even though environmental ethical holists will agree that moral significance can be attached to wholes over individuals. That means that species can have their own significance, and even intrinsic value, which we in many traditions have only attached to human beings.
Metaphysically speaking, Nelson distinguishes between logical or radical holism on the one hand, and well-being or interest holism on the other. Logical holism seems to imply a radical form of monism, where differences between individuals are merely apparent, and the ecological interconnectedness are primary, so individuals are subsumed by the reality of the whole. Such a view is described by Donald Worster, who states that holism is the view that “in which all nature is approached as a single indivisible unity” (1994, p. 21). This view can clearly be seen in continuity with the pantheism of Spinoza.
Well-being or interest holism is more the assumption that individual organisms are entwined within a matrix larger than their individual selves or the biotic community collectively. The reality of every individual is then intertwined within the collective, and their well-being and interests are provided within that as well, although there are differing opinions as to how to balance these two levels of interest (Nelson, 2010).
Freya Mathews finds Spinoza and Einstein as role models in formulating a monistic metaphysics and ethics that satisfies “the intuition of ‘oneness’ and interconnectedness” (2006). In Environmental Philosophy, she outlines how the Enlightenment was itself the cultural outcome of the scientific revolution of the 17th century. She describes the “Newtonian paradigm” that evolved with an “atomist perspective, where physical reality is divisible into ultimate constituents or units – particles” (2014, p. 4). The ultimate elements are then quantitative, measurable, in order to be able to provide a mathematical formulation. The constituents themselves were inert, with no internal principles, but moving only under the influence of external, deterministic forces.
When this atomism is combined with this mechanism, the resulting worldview is that the entire visible universe of bodies in motion amounts to little more than a large machine. With this picture, we cannot escape the conclusion that such an outlook on the world is essentially inanimate and insentient (Merchant, 1980). The result then, is a deep division of mind and matter – between the mental and the material, and suddenly a resurgence in a form of dualism. Mathews describes it in this manner:
“An immediate prima facie consequence of mechanism is, as Descartes demonstrated, dualism with respect to body and mind. If matter is dead, inert, lifeless and blind, and if the human body is material, then it looks as if some extra principle must be present in the body to render it animate and conscious. This extra nonmaterial principle was identified by Descartes as the principle of spirit or mind”. (2006, p. 40)
According to the philosopher Walter Stace, this quantitative turn away from inherent Aristotelian formal and final causation was itself not the result of some scientific discovery but was a result from a shift of focus to what was useful for what “science aims at: namely, the prediction and control events”. In other words, it was a methodological strategy (1948), but the world of philosophers soon proceeded to forget and made it into an ontology in itself.
In The Ecological Self, Freya Mathews characterizes these into the categories of two “metaphysical archetypes”, namely substance pluralism and substance monism. In monism, apparent differences are “no more than ripples on the surface of an oceanic continuum” (2006, p. 1). Mathews rejects the massively prevailing pluralistic view that she regards as the atomism that permeates even philosophy to this day, where relations between atoms, and their arrangement in space and time, are contingent. Their relatedness does not belong to their essence but are wholly superimposed from the outside.
We have moved on from these ideas, and Newtonian physics has been superseded, but we still haven’t managed to step out of the Newtonian cosmological framework. But what could an alternative look like? It needs to be something that’s consistent with the world of experience, but also with scientific findings.
Mathews proposes geometrodynamics, the attempt to describe space-time and associated phenomenon through geometry alone, as supporting a monistic metaphysics that could defy the problems of pluralism. This model could still though include the findings of science and evade that crude epistemological fallacy of taking scientific lore as literal truth. According to Mathews, modern physics does point towards a new worldview taking shape around the principles of quantum mechanics. If the principles of quantum mechanics are taken to characterize the fundamental nature of reality, then we have a new blueprint which Fritjof Capra describes:
“In contrast to the mechanistic Cartesian view of the world, the worldview emerging from modern physics can be characterized by words like ‘organic’, ‘holistic’, and ‘ecological’. It might also be called a systems view, in the sense of general systems theory. The universe is no longer seen as a machine, made up of a multitude of objects, but it has to be pictured as one indivisible, dynamic whole whose parts are essentially interrelated and can be understood only as patterns of a cosmic process (1983, p. 66).”
But more than just an environmental holist view, Freya Mathews in particular defends a panpsychist view, where all of matter inherently has some form of phenomenal proto-consciousness, to challenge the current materialist premises of the Western tradition. Mathews argues that matter needs to be present-to-itself, which she names, following Spinoza, as conatus, the “endeavor, wherewith everything endeavors to persist in its own being” (2003, p. 48). The universe becomes an indivisible unity, a locus of subjectivity, where the physicality of the universe as a whole is subjectively present. The upside of this, is that “the difference between the world as real and the world as mere appearance can be explicated via an attribution of subject status to the world as a whole” (2003, p. 48). She writes that a turn towards a “presence-to-itself” in all matter, would alter “the epistemological and spiritual orientation to the world that underpins it” (2003, p. 28).
Hence, although it is the environmental crisis that is calling us to this reorientation, the reorientation itself is much more far-reaching in scope than has thus far been acknowledged by even the most radical streams of the environmental movement. The reanimation entailed by panpsychism embraces materiality per se, and hence the mineral and the artefactual, not merely the biological or the natural. Panpsychism in the present context is thus not equivalent to ecologism; it encompasses but also exceeds a ‘deep ecological’ metaphysics.
Mathews admits her panpsychism is not susceptible of strict rational demonstration in the analytic sense, but that: “One is likely to become a panpsychist only as a result of direct experience of a responsive world” (2003, p. 5). The often-overlooked part is that it is not only we as human beings that are reaching out when we engage in knowing about the world, but the is in some way also needs to be respond – open itself – to our inquiry for knowledge.
Mathews takes issue with the attempts by modern science and materialist, atomist philosophy that presents matter dualistically as pure object. If matter has no resemblance to mind, then how can the latter somehow be generated from the former? Physics may be in the business of observing “from the outside”, but if we are to be have a satisfactory understanding of reality, we must observe it “from within”. She argues that space and time and the existence of the universe at all can only be explained if subjectivity is taken as fundamental to the nature of reality.
Subjectivity needs to be a fundamental, non-reducible feature of reality, where mind and matter cannot be strictly distinguished from each other. There needs to be a dialectical process of the world communicating itself to us, and not only we as buffered selves projecting our categories unto it. Only then can we regain our confidence in any epistemological approach.
This informs us about Mathews’ view of her holism and the view of relations in the natural order. She uses the Platonic terminology of the One and the Many. She claims that all entities, even if devoid of a conscious awareness such as ours, are still animated by a mindlike energy of the world as a whole. She envisages the universe as a conscious whole, as “the One”, engaged in this constant process of self-realization. There exist finite centers of subjectivity, “the Many”, that arise from this underlying conscious whole of the One, but they still experience themselves as distinct, enabling them to pursue their own individual self-realization, even though this cannot be seen in isolation from the self-realization of the whole (2003). If this is correct, one cannot view oneself apart from the rest of the ecological order, and the present destruction of our environmental conditions is a tragedy, not only for some nature conceptualized separately from ourselves, but for all of us.
As previously mentioned, the modern Newtonian science resulting in the atomist view that Mathews is critiquing, overthrew the prevailing Aristotelian paradigm of the day, and especially its concepts of inherent formal and final causes. And at some points, Mathews view on relations resembles in some ways the more classical approach of Aristotelian teleology, e.g. when she states that “desire can be construed as the urge to immerse self in world, to participate fully in the realness of the world” (2003, p. 58). When understanding desire through the lenses of final causes, Aristotelianism understand both inanimate objects and living organisms to act towards the fullness of their being. This desire, says Mathews, is “a mode of address, rather than of representation or explanation, is now required in our approach to reality, and such address should be integrated into all our social and personal practices (…) From a panpsychist viewpoint, the aim is not to theorize the world, but to relate to it, and to rejoice in that relationship” (2003, p. 88). “Relating” here can plausibly be viewed as a form of intentional teleology. The teleological communication between the knower and the known is a real relation.
Mathews’ holism then, is distinguished from other environmental holists in her embrace of panpsychism. The world is embedded with mentality in itself, and in this monistic view, individuation is merely apparent as a wave in the ocean, but where we’re longing to participate fully in the relationship to the whole.
References
Capra, F. (1983). The Turning Point. London: Fontana.
Mathews, F. (2003). For Love of Matter: A Contemporary Panpsychism. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Mathews, F. (2006). The Ecological Self. Abingdon: Routledge.
Mathews, F. (2014). Environmental Philosophy. In N.N. Trakakis, & G. Oppy (Eds), A History of Australasian Philosophy. (pp. 543-591). Dordrecht: Springer.
Merchant, C. (1980). The Death of Nature. New York: Harper and Row.
Nelson, M. P. (2010). Teaching holism in environmental ethics. Environmental Ethics. 32 (1):33-49.
Stace, W. (1948). Man Against Darkness. The Atlantic Monthly. CLXXXII.
Worster, D. (1994). Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.