Every once
in a while my walkabout seems to stop in mid stride, pause and then abruptly
turn in another direction. Today was one of those times. I had decided to sit
down and simply read a chapter from A
Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber which I had finally purchased
because my daughter had suggested that I should. She had promised I would find
clear writing and unique thinking. Armed with my usual cup of coffee, a pad and
a pen I arrived almost at once at an unanticipated stopping point. My eyes and
my mind saw a sentence which spoke of thinking I had not considered. “Time goes on and today’s wholes are
tomorrow’s parts.”
I did not
begin to look for a quotation about time but there it was and that thinking
gave me a new purpose and turned me in a different direction. Ken Wilber’s
words led me through the concept that there is no whole anything. Everything is
“whole/part” forever. The combination of whole/part is then defined as a holon.
After many minutes of searching I learned that holon was a word created by
Arthur Koestler, a Hungarian-British author and journalist. A holon (Greek: ὅλον,
holon neuter form of ὅλος, holos "whole") is something that is
simultaneously a whole and a part. The word was coined by Arthur Koestler in
his book The Ghost in the Machine
(1967, p. 48). You can learn much more about the unique Arthur Koestler at the
site shown below.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Koestler
(should be: Arthur_Koestler)
See also: http://www.integralworld.net/edwards13.html
Here you will be looking at an interesting article : A Brief History of Holons by Mark Edwards and you will observe the idea of the holon occupies a central position in Koestler's thinking about
the human condition.
Consider,
here, two of Koestler’s quoted thoughts:
“Creative activity could be described
as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same
individual” And “Courage is never to let your actions be
influenced by your fears.”
As I became
comfortable with the origin and purpose of holon I turned on my heels and
began to search for the word kosmos which sounded a lot like cosmos and was
therefore a bit confusing. I turned to
my old friend etyomology where I learned that kosmos was Greek in origin and it
was passed on to us from Greek kosmos ‘order or world’ and through middle
English. So how did this word morph? Enter Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander
von Humboldt a Prussian explorer and naturalist, (1769-1859). Humboldt viewed the world the ancient Greeks
called a kosmos and saw a “beautifully ordered and harmonious system”. If I
have read it correctly von Humboldt later coined the word cosmos as a title
word. Using the word cosmos enabled him
to encompass heaven and earth together.
Indeed,
Laura Dassow Walls in her book The
Passage to Cosmos Its subtitle is Alexander
van Humboldt and the Shaping of America describes Humboldt’s “vision of humans and nature as integrated halves of a
single whole.”
I had found
in cosmos and kosmos something that is simultaneously a whole/part of the
single whole forever and realized I had completed a circle and have arrived
where I began.
Today’s walkabout is complete and I can now return to Wilber’s
book with better understanding as my companion.
Thank you
for joining me.
and
No doubt you
also remember the book Cosmos by
Carl Sagan. (An interesting man and book)!
