93 WCD as a (W(H)olistic Response 2 (p. 261). The mind is its ‘most important and conspicuous element’, but the material body ‘is also very important and gives the intimate flavour of humanity to Personality (…) The ideal Personality only arises where Mind irradiates Body and Body nourishes Mind, and the two are one in mutual transfigurement’ (Smuts, 1926, p. 261). Jörgenfelt and Partington (2019) showed how widespread the influence of Smuts’ (1926) holism became in around 90 years, leading to quantum holism, holistic ecology, holistic engineering, holistic biology, linguistic holism, management holism and holistic medicine. However, they criticised the lack of a clear definition and the vagueness of the concepts used in these areas, identifying at least 36 different scholarly definitions of holism itself. At the same time, they were convinced that Smuts’ (1926) claims concerning wholes, matter, fields and space–time in contemporary science constituted a possibility for explaining the reality of nature. Still, they remained critical of Smuts’ (1926) insights into personality as an ultimate evolution of matter, life and mind. According to Jörgenfelt and Partington (2019), the three wholes that Smuts (1926) distinguished in his anthropology—body, cognitive abilities of mind and individual personality—can, in fact, be positively debated (p. 12). Craig (1992) applied the definition from the Random House Dictionary of the English Language that describes holism as ‘the theory that whole entities, as fundamental and determining components of reality, have an existence other than as the mere sum of their parts’. She argued that the adjective ‘holistic’ has been applied, since Smuts’ (1926) introduction of the term, to ‘approaches and attitudes, in the humanities and the social sciences as well as the sciences, that privilege the study of a system over analysis of its parts’ (Craig, 1992, pp. 4–5). Tucker (1996) distinguished between two versions of holistic thinking: one that focuses on the individual organism and relates to holistic health, and another, more sociologically informed, that encompasses both economic and political systems as well as biological and environmental systems. He combined the two versions into a critical holism that integrates a shift from biomedical reductionism to individual and sociological holism, including political holism as well as interpersonal and spiritual dimensions. What Tucker (1996) accomplished with regard to the sociology of health, Nederveen Pieterse (1997) sought to apply to the social sciences. He argued that necessary antidotes to modernism tend to suffer from dichotomous thinking themselves, skipping levels and framing contemporary dilemmas in anachronistic terms. ‘Wholeness in development should not be expected from a shortcut towards an undivided whole in a divided world, but should be sought in a new balance: a combination of wholeness and difference’
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw