Lawless Universe by Joe Rosen

Author:Joe Rosen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2010-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Reductionism and Holism

The next stop on our way to a clarification of how it is that there are laws of nature within the intrinsically lawless universe is yet another polarity, which we can add to the realism-idealism one.

We live in nature and view it and are intrigued. Our material needs and our curiosity drive us to try to understand what is happening around us. What we observe in nature is a complex of phenomena—some apparently interrelated, others seemingly independent—including ourselves, where we’re related to all of nature, as is implied by our definition of nature as the material universe with which we can, or can conceivably, interact. The possibility of interaction is what relates us to all of nature and, owing to the mutuality of interaction and of the consequent relation, relates all of nature to us.

It follows that all aspects and phenomena of nature are interrelated, whether they appear so or not. Whether they are interrelated independently of us or not, they are certainly interrelated through our mediation. For example, let’s say that aspect A of nature is not directly related to phenomenon P. But since both A and P are components of nature, we can interact with both. Thus they are interrelated by means of us. A can interact with P by interacting with us, thereby causing us to interact with P, and vice versa. In this manner all of nature, including Homo sapiens, is interrelated and integrated.

Science is our attempt to understand (the reproducible and predictable aspects of) nature objectively. But how are we to grasp this wholeness, this integrality? Nature, in its completeness, appears so awesomely complex, owing to the interrelation of all its aspects and phenomena, that it might seem utterly beyond hope to understand anything about it at all. True, some obvious precincts of simplicity stand out, such as day-night periodicity, the annual cycle of the seasons, and the fact that fire consumes. And subtler simplicity can also be discerned, such as the term of pregnancy, the correlation between clouds and rain, and—still more subtle—the relation between tides and the phases of the Moon.

Yet on the whole, complexity seems to be the norm, and even simplicity, when considered in more detail, reveals wealths of complexity. But owing to nature’s unity, to its integrality, any attempt to analyze nature into simpler component parts cannot avoid leaving something out of the picture.

That brings us, at length, to the metaphysical position called holism. According to the holist worldview, nature can be understood only in its wholeness or not at all. And that includes human beings as part of nature. So long as nature is not yet understood, there is no reason a priori to consider any aspect or phenomenon of it as being intrinsically more or less important than any other. Thus it is not meaningful to pick out some part of nature as being more “worthy” of investigation than other parts. Neither is it meaningful, according to the holist position, to investigate an aspect or phenomenon of nature as if it were isolated from the rest of nature.

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