HOLISM AS CREATIVE ACTIVITY So far in the above account holism has been put forward as a way out of some of the difficulties which, under the most recent scientific. advances, arise on the orthodox mechanistic theory. But it is here further suggested as the solution of the greatest problem of all which has arisen from the more recent contact of science and philosophy. This is the problem of creativeness or epigenesis in evolution. It is a commonplace now that this is a growing evolving world, that new forms and types arise from the old, and that in the course of the history of the earth, the forms of life have progressed from the simplest and lowest to the very highly organized types of today, culminating in the human personality. The name "creative evolution" has in consequence. been applied to this process. And the question arises as to the meaning of the term "creative" in this connection. There was the older philo sophical view that the new is already existing in minutest shape, "preformed" in the old, and that the creative process is simply the unfolding or unpacking of the new forms already existing latent in the old forms. This "preformation" view has, however, been generally discarded by scientists, who have found it in con flict not only with the facts of the geological and palaeontological record, but also with those of embryology, which disclose the indi vidual development as passing through the most curious phylo genetic phases. The creative or epigenetic view of evolution has in consequence been generally adopted, according to which the old gives rise to the genuinely new, to what cannot be reduced to the old and cannot be explained or accounted for by it alone. But this concept of creation or creativeness seems to involve a miracle : how can the higher arise from the lower, the more from the less, as this seems to imply that something can come from nothing? How can a variation or new species arise in some inexplicable unpredictable way from a lower simpler pre-existing state of affairs or species? Profs. Alexander' and Lloyd Morgan' accept the creative process "in natural piety" as an unaccountable fact. Prof. Boodin has somewhat fancifully suggested that the creatively new must in fact be an imported article, a new pattern imported to our world from another existing order of things in the Where this order is to be found he does not say, though no doubt Sir Oliver Lodge would suggest the ether. Some again attempt to explain the riddle by virtually reading into the old what emerges in the new, and thus in effect returning to the "pre formation" to which some other thinkers' seem inclined in any case to return openly as the only way out. This is all very unsatisfactory, and the question arises whether we are forced to admit the existence of some mysterious irrational element within the central sphere of science. It would be most awkward for philosophy to make such an admission in respect of this key posi tion of evolution. If science (so largely the product of reason) calls for the concept of creative evolution, and philosophy declares it a mystery beyond reason, philosophy appears to be stultified and virtually to abdicate her sovereign position. It is here suggested that the explanation is to be found in the concept of the whole. For this concept opens the door directly and simply to creative 'Space, Time and Deity pp. 46-47.
Evolution p. 35.
Evolution pp. 124-125.
Journal of Philos. Studies, Oct. 1927, P. 492. The Idea of the Holy, ch. xiv.
ness. The whole is creative; wherever parts conspire to form a whole, there something arises which is more than the parts. It is the very nature and concept of a whole to be more than its parts, as we have seen. The origin of a whole from its parts is an instance of the more arising from the less, the higher from the lower, in a way which does no violence to reason, but on the contrary follows from reason, because the concept of a whole in relation to its parts is a product of reason. Creative evolution is therefore an inexplicable process, unless we link it on to the con cept of wholes, and look upon the creative growing evolving uni verse as a universe of wholes. It is the making of wholes which makes this universe creative, and the creative universe is therefore necessarily the holistic universe.
(A) Cause and Effect.—The usual conception of the causal relation establishes an exact equation between cause and effect, and thus makes the element of creation or advance in natural happening unintelligible. For if the effect is never more than the cause, if cause is and must always necessarily be an exact measure of effect, this cannot be a creative progressive universe, and the causal category in this sense makes creative evolution impossible. The accepted fact of creative evolution is a proof that the usual concept of cause is too abstractly and narrowly conceived, that in the universe effect can and sometimes does transcend cause, al though usually on so small a scale as to create the illusion of their equality. Here again the idea of wholes gives the clue and expla nation. In so far as causes operate holistically, that is to say, where several factors contribute towards the making of new wholes, their operation is creative, there is more in the effect than in the cause or combination of causes, and real creative advance results. Purely mechanical causation (which is perhaps a mere fiction) is equative and is correctly expressed by the ordinary causal concept. But holistic causation, which is the real process, makes possible the increase and advance which is actually the fact in nature.
(B) Freedom and Determination.—In the same way and on the same grounds, the concept of the whole and of holistic happening resolves the old controversy between freedom and determination in nature. The chain of necessity arises from the ordinary causal concept which equates cause and effect without remainder, and thus makes the cause determine the effect com pletely. If this causal concept is wrong, the inference of necessity becomes unjustified. So far as there is an undetermined creative element in the holistic effect, not attributable to the conspiring causal elements, to that extent there is indetermination and free dom, infinitesimally small and practically negligible in physical causation, but much more marked and appreciable in organic happening, and still more so in mental process. An element of freedom thus becomes recognized as inherent in nature, which increases with the progress of evolution, until on the human level it attains considerable dimensions, and becomes the basis for moral responsibility. Freedom is native to the holistic uni verse, and is not merely an attribute of the human will, in accord ance with the usual view.
(C) Individuality.—The concept of wholes is also basic to the category of individuality. The organic unity which consti tutes a whole is in fact the ultimate basis of individuality. Of this there are traces in inorganic nature already, but it is only on the organic level that individuality assumes practical importance. Plants are individuals, perhaps without having any real individu ality, but among the higher animals the feature of individuality becomes of real importance. Dogs, horses and even lower ani mals have distinct character and individuality. With the emergence of conscious mind in man, the aspect of individuality becomes all important, and becomes the basis for the latest and greatest whole of evolution, the human personality. In mental development there are two aspects, the universal tendency, which culminates in the reason, creative of rational order and universal concepts and laws; and the contrasted individual tendency, which reaches an especial development in conscious mind, and constitutes the unique identity or self of the human personality. Individuality rising into person ality is perhaps the chief differentia of the human level of evolu tion. Individuality and reason are the principal constituents of personality, and both are expressions of holism and have their roots in primitive holism.
(D) Mind and Body.—Throughout the evolutionary process, lower wholes have given birth to higher wholes and become incor porated with them. Thus material chemical patterns have pro duced life-patterns which have incorporated and not discarded the parent patterns. Mind is a new organ or pattern developed inside the earlier physical and biological structures; and the three, inex tricably interwoven into a new pattern, constitute a new whole or personality. The three sets of patterns are not independent reals superimposed on each other ; they have arisen the one inside the other and are blended into the whole of personality, which consti tutes and explains the unity and inter-relations existing between the three. These relations of mind and body would be inex plicable on mechanical grounds, and have in fact presented an insoluble problem to philosophy through all ages. But here again the whole supplies the key. Once we view personality as a real whole, containing earlier blended wholes as its parts, the unity of the whole is seen to underlie and make possible the relations be tween them, which however are not mechanical but "holistic." Holistic relations are such as exist, not externally as between dif ferent parts, but internally as different aspects of the same whole. In fact, we have here reached the point where we may restate the concept of the whole above set forth, and show it, not as the relations of parts in and to a whole (because this formulation is provisional and still savours of mechanical associations) but as the contrasted aspects of the whole from the outside or the inside, from an external standpoint or from its own standpoint. The parts represent its external aspect, which is mechanical ; the whole is its aspect from its own standpoint, the view of the whole as a self, so to say. The relation of whole and parts is thus trans formed into the relation of self and not-self, with which we are acquainted as the subject-object relation in psychology. Whole ness is itself ness. The concept of the whole therefore, when prop erly understood, enables us to describe the nature of reality in terms which satisfy the conditions both of physics and psychology, and at the same time disclose body and mind as different (exter nal and internal) aspects of the same thing. This is the key to all their relations. The reality, the true whole, is human personality in each case ; apart from it the human body is neither human nor a body. Similarly mind apart from the whole of personality, becomes a functionless abstraction. The whole as creative explains the relation between matter and life, between body and mind. It rules out both materialism and parallelism. In the whole, for instance, mind arises as a new factor X on the basis of neuroses or neural elements a, b, c, etc., which become fused and synthe sized, and to the extent that X is new it is also, and for that very reason, without a neural correlate. The psychical is thus more than its physiological neural antecedents, although arising from them, and the overplus in mind has no direct neural correspond ents. The patterns of the new emergent wholes are different from and transcend those of the elements or lower wholes from which they have arisen and cannot be discovered by searching of the lower patterns.