Systems Theory, The Key to Holism and Reductionism

Abstract

The position of biology among the other natural sciences and the interaction of science and society present questions which are engaging our minds more than ever before. The changing of the place of science in the community may be considered a cultural evolution. Without dwelling on the controversies (cf. Waddington 1960, for example), it may safely be assumed that there is a certain analogy between biological and cultural evolution, to cite the significant summary of Osche (1972). The scientific information collected in the course of history and preserved in the culture is passed from one generation to the other by means of family and education in the schools. This continuous flow of cultural information is constantly subject to change and renewal. Certain attributes become disused because they are replaced by new discoveries and inventions , the selective value of which has been tested in the human day-today experience, or quite often at present, in specialized scientific and technological research. In this complicated process, the interweaving of "theory and prac-tice" plays a central role (van Melsen 1961, 1970). Dijksterhuis (1950) has called the course of development of natural science, from ancient conceptions to the analytical abstraction and mathematization of present-day physics and chemistry, the mechanization of the world picture. The mechanization of the biological, picture of the world is also in full swing. This is accompanied by a blurring, and even vanishing, of the boundaries between the inorganic and the biological sciences. This change in the identity of biology is not only of theoretical significance , it is of much greater practical importance, because the mechanized picture of "life" impinges on society where it is a noticeable force in science policy.