Jackie Bobro
25 August 2001
ENVR 790
Capra, Fritjof, The Web of Life, Anchor, New York, 1996.
Throughout the years, various scientific communities have struggled with the idea of systems thinking. In chapter 2, Capra explains the history and conflicting views between mechanism and holism. He defines mechanism as being matter, structure, and quantity and holism as being form, pattern, and quality. Although popular belief and concern among the scientific community has vacillatedbetween both views, the majority of history has supported Cartesian mechanism. Great scientists such as Galileo and Descartes throughout history have championed the view of the world as a machine, restricting scientific discovery and understanding to what could be measured and quantified. Belief that life as a whole could ultimately be explained through physical and chemical analysis has been challenged sporadically through the years by revolutionary minds. Goethe conceived form as a pattern of relationships within an organized whole (pg 21). Kant distinguished between the machine and organism by saying that the parts of a machine exist only for each other whereas the parts of an organism exist by means of each other. He emphasized self-reproducing, self-organizing wholes (pg 22).
The Gaia hypothesis, the idea of Earth as a living planet was embraced for a short time in the beginning of the 19th century, but by the mid 1800’s, with the discovery of the laws of heredity, cell embryology, and the rise of the microscope, the shift was back to mechanism (pg23). Yet this seemingly new affirmation of mechanism as truth was shortly followed by opposition from vitalism and organicism. Although both lines of thought agreed with the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, they differ in one vital area. Vitalism suggests that some unknown force must be added to the laws of physics and chemistry to understand life, whereas organicism states that the unknown force is the organization of relationships among the parts that together can be greater than the sum of those parts (pg25). This idea is quite powerful because it means that everything can’t be analyzed to death before it can be understood. In fact, systems thinking is quite the opposite. According to Capra, properties of the whole arise from relationships among the parts, and these properties are destroyed when the system is dissected (pg 29). He also points out that this is extremely frightening to the scientific community, and I agree, it is quite hard to accept!
Out of organicism came ecology as the study of the relations between organisms and the surrounding environment (pg 33). Ecology has opened a door for systems thinking to expand by focusing on networks and communities of organisms (pg33).
Capra repeatedly stressed the patterns and relationships between organisms and the networks that they form. I think that although it is not said directly, that if this cyclical way of thinking is to be applied it must advance indefinitely, on both smaller and larger scales. I feel that this may be Capra’s point, and it is quite intimidating for a traditional scientist to contemplate. Hopefully this book and this class will help me to overcome the anxiety that Capra and systems thinking will surely impress upon me.