Abstract
This essay on “Patterns and Meanings of Holism” is the product of a research on “holism”, which is part of a project on “The Synthesis of Knowledge: Thai Society under Reform Currents”. The research aims at an understanding of and a commentary on holism, a concept widely used in the reform currents in contemporary Thai society. It relies on the following concepts and theories, namely:- Gregory Bateson’s metamessage, logical type and ecology of mind, Immanuel Kant’s focus imaginarius or projected unity, Alfred North Whitehead’s abstraction, identity and background, Stephen Rothman’s critique of strong reductionism, Erwin Schrodinger’s objectivation, quantum physics’ non-locality and interrelationship, David Bohm’s implicate order, explicate order and soma-significance interrelationship, Carl Jung’s synchronicity, and discussions of related subjects in Milindapanha (Milinda’s Questions) as well as other major texts such as those of Rene Descartes, Isaac Newton and Martin Heidegger.As a result of the studies, analysis and synthesis of various concepts and theories, the research arrives at the following conclusions.Holism is “a meaningful connecting pattern of all components in a given context”.Holism is a subject concerning with the working process of human thought, which has to rely on a connecting pattern. Wholes and parts are thus inseparable; and the thing that makes it possible for them to “hang together” in a certain way is a connecting pattern that depends on a certain meaning.Fragmentation and reduction are not the same thing. And once many ideas, commonly regarded as reductionism, have been seriously considered, it will be found out that they are, in fact, based upon wholes and meanings as well.Various ideas of holism share a common ground in emphasizing the importance of meanings and contexts, and a common attempt to reinstate them in the construction of knowledge.The key issue of holism should thus be an awareness of wholes inherent in contemporary trends in the construction of knowledge; and the emphasis should be on the “meaning” or “value” that defines whole entities, components and contexts of the search for knowledge. This may be called a “meta-methodology,” which is -- the awareness, selection and application of a type of meaning to define a whole entity, its parts, the context, and to construct a connecting pattern of the thing being mentioned, observed and studied. This will also include an understanding or argument concerning the choice of meaning.
