Search Results (63)

This paper contends that the West’s civic crisis is, at root, a cosmological crisis: civic renewal requires metaphysical repair. It is insufficient to endorse virtue ethics and demand civic virtues without a deeper account of reality that can sustain them. What is needed is a cosmology—one informed by contemporary science—in which nature, personhood, and political community are meaningfully situated within an ordered whole. Drawing on the Platonic isomorphism between soul, city, and cosmos, I outline a hylomorphic framework with the potential to integrate key elements of neo-Aristotelian, Stoic, and Thomist metaphysics with developments in contemporary physics. Against the dominant atomistic and holistic paradigms, I argue that hylomorphism offers a more adequate account of personhood, the polis, and the cosmos itself as an intelligible whole. Full article

Embodied, enactive cognition, which is also embedded or emplaced cognition and extended cognition through tools, including language, presents various challenges to the standard model of the cognitive science of religion. In its focus on unconscious brain mechanisms, the standard model downplays or eliminates religious meaning as epiphenomenal or illusory. It often denies that religion, once present, is adaptive or admits as adaptive only costly signaling. It regards humans’ perceptions of their environments as representations, mistaking an environment as determinate before cognition occurs. This support for indirect perception makes no sense given its emphasis on the need for sensing possible threats to survival. As brain mechanisms of individuals do all the heavy lifting, the model regards culture and its influence as nonexistent or insignificant. This stance denies how the social constitutes a huge part of our embodied preobjective and tacit engagement with the world, as well as socio-cultural realities, including religion, as self-organizing systems. The neglect of embodiment extends to its take on supernatural agents as allegedly disembodied minds. The standard model overlooks how ordinary rituals promote bonding through group presence, synchrony, and endorphin production and how some rituals increase knowledge of a particular natural environment, thus overlooking how religion can be adaptive. Full article

The existence of the spiritual can be deduced from knowledge of the material. There is an inherent affinity between speculation and spirituality: an embrace of gaps in knowledge. Speculative Realisms’ rejection of both existential anthropocentrism and correlationism in favor of more empathetic, a-, pan-, or metacentric perspectives, allows for a flat ontology where all objects equally exist and allow us to describe how the spiritual exists outside of thought. This perspective allows us to derive the existence of the spiritual via the examination of interactions between material objects. By showing how all objects, whether material or abstract, have a spiritual aspect, this paper advocates for a holistic understanding of reality that recognizes the interconnectedness of all objects. Full article

This paper analyzes the Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) within the Arctic Cultural Circle by comparing three influential texts: the Russian travelogue Dersu, the Trapper (1923); the Canadian memoir People of the Deer (1952); and the Chinese novel The Last Quarter of the Moon (2005). By examining these texts, which depict the Indigenous cultures of the Nanai, the Ihalmiut, and the Ewenki, the study identifies shared ecological perspectives. These include an emphasis on the sacredness of nature, as seen in their animistic worship and spiritual connection to the environment; a holistic relationship between humans and nature, characterized by a wise and sustainable use of resources and a minimal sense of ownership; and a sense of reciprocity among all living beings, fostering mutual care and respect within the natural world. The paper further contends that the TEK of the circle offers valuable reference for addressing contemporary environmental and social challenges posed by climate change and biodiversity loss, particularly in the context of modernization and globalization. Full article

The transition from linear to circular value creation is leading to a fundamental transformation in all areas of manufacturing organisations. Maturity models are used to analyse and support the transformation, but these have deficiencies regarding holism and the ability to process fuzziness. To address these deficiencies, a holistic Fuzzy Logic approach to Circular Economy maturity assessment is proposed. Circular Economy maturity indicators are processed in a multi-stage fuzzy system. This allows for the identification of potential for change in all areas of the organisation to derive actions to improve the organisation’s circularity. Full article

Environmental unsustainability in coupled human–nature systems is accumulating. Yet, there is no accreditation requirement for unsustainability resolution competency in higher education. Thus, a new and complete representation of the pedagogy for unsustainability resolution competence has been induced, using what is already available and working. The nature of unsustainability problems points to collaboration and holism attitudes. Resolution requires social skills, namely participation, perspective taking, and the generation of social capital, and cognitive skills, namely project management, knowledge building, and modeling. Resolution is scaffolded in three successive steps during the collaborative process within a systems approach: (i) collapse complexity; (ii) select a path/trajectory; and (iii) operationalize a plan. The hierarchically cumulative abilities toward unsustainability resolution competence are to source data and information about the coupled human–nature system (SEARCH); simplify the dynamics of the human–nature system (SIMULATE); generate and test alternative paths and end points for the coupled human–nature system (STRATEGIZE); chose a favorable path among the available alternatives (SELECT); operationalize the favorable path into a plan (strategy–program–project) with measurable management and policy objectives (IMPLEMENT); and develop criteria/indicators to monitor and adjust when necessary the implementation of the plan toward system goals (STEER). For each one of these learning objectives, the Bloom’s taxonomy and a progression from behaviorist through cognitivist to constructivist tools apply. The development of mastery requires the comparison and contrast of many similar cases with the same unsustainability problem and project-based learning with specific cases for deep learning. In this way, it is the resolutions of unsustainability in human–nature systems that will be accumulating. Full article

In the present business environment, the strategic challenge of increasing performance along multiple dimensions simultaneously—e.g., financial, social, and personal—has never been greater. Thus, the purpose of this study is to improve the understanding of how firms can successfully pursue diverse performance goals simultaneously. To that end, specifically, this study’s objectives are to not only explore whether entrepreneurs are more successful than their corporate manager peers in that pursuit but also to explore how being an entrepreneur and being spiritual provide possible paths to being successful in such a pursuit. We draw upon a recent survey of 168 medium-sized venture entrepreneurs and their corporate executive peers in the US to better understand how such integration of roles and goals can be managed. Results indicate that being an entrepreneur and being spiritual lead to greater synergies among the performance outcomes, with some exceptions. The holistic nature underlying the findings has implications for policy (e.g., resource allocation) and for practice in that all firms should be seeking ways to find synergies not only between pairs of outcomes (e.g., profits and CSR) but among networks of outcomes (and at different levels of impact). Full article

This paper aims to interpret the role of the soul as ontological, intellectual or cognitive and as the moral principle within the frame of the holistic conception of human psychosomatic health that emerges from the context of Zalmoxian medicine in the proemium of Plato’s Charmides. It examines what the ontological status of the soul is in relation to the body and the body–soul complex of man considered as a psychosomatic whole. By comparing the presentation of the soul as principle in the Charmides and the Phaedrus, the paper defends the thesis that in the former dialogue, Plato develops his own anthropological ontology, which paves the way for the salvation of human existence and health. The soul is bestowed with an ontological primacy that determines the philosophical and medical presuppositions for treating human illness under a holistic view. The interpretation of the ontological relation of the soul to the body and the entire human being in the context of Zalmoxian holistic medicine is based on Hermias Alexandrinus’ exegesis of the conception of the soul as principle in the Phaedrus. This paper demonstrates that, from both the medical holistic viewpoint and the anthropological philosophical perspective, the soul is the principle and πρῶτον with regard to the body and the body–soul complex without being the whole that the corresponding medical epistemology must apprehend. Full article

Social media platforms may be promising intervention tools to address the nutrition literacy and associated health behaviours of young women. We aimed to co-design a lifestyle intervention on social media targeting eating, physical activity, and social wellbeing that is evidence-based, acceptable, and engaging for young women aged 18–24 years. The study used a participatory design framework and previously published iterative mixed methods approach to intervention development. Matrices for workshop objectives were constructed using expert discussions and insights were sought from young women in participatory workshops. A 10-step qualitative data analysis process resulted in relevant themes, which guided intervention development. The resulting intervention, the Daily Health Coach, uses multiple features of Instagram to disseminate health information. Co-created nutrition content considers themes such as holism, food relationships, and food neutrality and acknowledges commonly experienced barriers associated with social media use such as nutrition confusion, body image concerns, and harmful comparison. This study may guide other researchers or health professionals seeking to engage young women in the co-design of women’s health promotion or intervention content on social media. Full article

This paper presents a synoptic (“Two-Eyed Seeing”) approach to science transfer in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), based on an ontological framework inspired by two related concepts from Western philosophy (Sellars’ synoptic view) and indigenous wisdom (Two-Eyed Seeing). It was tested and further developed in a participatory research process with first year student science teachers. The results show that this model can support a balanced approach between a scientific and a holistic perspective at each stage of the teaching process—preparation, implementation and assessment—and help to integrate sustainability issues consistently into science lessons. In the course of the research process, the model has developed into a viable educational tool that distinguishes between a person-oriented lifeworld image and a things-oriented scientific image and guides the systematic transfer between the two images. It promotes students’ reasoning and scientific practice as well as their identity formation and community interaction, two equally important issues in ESD of today. The pre-service teachers were careful to close the loop, as they put it, between the two images. They saw health and environmental issues as particularly helpful in realising scientific holism. The pre-service teachers interpreted the role of the teacher as a facilitator or mediator between the two images rather than as an expert and advocate of a one-sided scientific image of the world. The model may be of general interest to teachers and researchers who design, implement, evaluate and investigate ESD activities. The potential use of the scientific holism framework and the synoptic (“Two-Eyed Seeing”) tool for science transfer in public and political sustainability discourse is also discussed. Full article

This article argues that complexity scientists have been searching for a universal complexity in the form of a “theory of everything” since some important theoretical breakthroughs such as Bertalanffy’s general systems theory, Wiener’s cybernetics, chaos theory, synergetics, self-organization, self-organized criticality and complex adaptive systems, which brought the study of complex systems into mainstream science. In this respect, much attention has been paid to the importance of a “reductionist complexity science” or a “reductionist theory of everything”. Alternatively, many scholars strongly argue for a holistic or emergentist “theory of everything”. The unifying characteristic of both attempts to account for complexity is an insistence on one robust explanatory framework to describe almost all natural and socio-technical phenomena. Nevertheless, researchers need to understand the conceptual historical background of “complexity science” in order to understand these longstanding efforts to develop a single all-inclusive theory. In this theoretical overview, I address this underappreciated problem and argue that both accounts of the “theory of everything” seem problematic, as they do not seem to be able to capture the whole of reality. This realization could mean that the idea of a single omnipotent theory falls flat. However, the prospects for a “holistic theory of everything” are much better than a “reductionist theory of everything”. Nonetheless, various forms of contemporary systems thinking and conceptual tools could make the path to the “theory of everything” much more accessible. These new advances in thinking about complexity, such as “Bohr’s complementarity”, Morin’s Complex thinking, and Cabrera’s DSRP theory, might allow the theorists to abandon the EITHER/OR logical operators and start thinking about BOTH/AND operators to seek reconciliation between reductionism and holism, which might lead them to a new “theory of everything”. Full article

Nutrition, as a science, is facing challenges. While issues regarding obesity, chronic diseases, and sustainability are becoming more pressing, nutrition science is encountering limitations regarding novel insights, trust, and social relevance. In order to move forward, we need to innovate the field and explore new perspectives. Current nutrition research has mainly employed a reductionist approach, which has been very successful in the past. However, reductionism shows limitations when addressing the problems we face today. The addressed weaknesses of reductionism include (1) the questionable assumption that nutrients and calories are exchangeable between foods, (2) the tendency of reductionism to oversimplify reality, which has consequences for complex concepts such as health and nutrition, and (3) the focus on details, which could undermine the aim of nutrition science: creating optimal dietary guidelines for the promotion of health and prevention of disease. Holism offers an alternative perspective that could complement these limitations, on the condition that they are similar enough on an ontological and epistemological level. Holistic approaches to health appear in eastern philosophies (ayurveda), but also in modern western nutrition approaches (dietary patterns). These two holistic approaches can complement reductionism in the following ways: (1) Holistic approaches like ayurveda and dietary patterns provide different nutritional knowledge by considering multiple factors that affect food’s health potential, in addition to only nutrients and calories. Some of these factors include food processing, food matrix/structure, food combinations, food compatibility, and nutrient interaction. (2) Holism can complement the reductionistic tendency to oversimplify reality by including subjective, individual, and holistic aspects of health into nutrition research and embracing the complexity of food-chronic disease relationships. (3) Holism has the potential to improve the practical relevance and comprehensibility of nutrition science. All presented results were based on the existing literature, found in Scopus and PubMed. To conclude, this study explores how holism can complement the limitations of reductionism, and as a result, reduce the overemphasis on reductionism as a research approach, which will hopefully promote progress and inspire the future of nutrition science. Full article

This essay employs Dr Martin Luther King, Jr’s sermon, “The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life”, as an acute lens through which to assess and impart new meanings to African–American activists’ strivings to reach an ideal state of humanness and communal holism as they fulfilled their personal, political, and spiritual missions in the food realm during the 1960s Civil Rights era and the contemporary food justice movement. Narrative analyses of these Black activists’ personal testimonies convey that their discrete journeys to completeness—what Dr King called the ideal state of humanity in its fullness—were not only facilitated by a divine calling but were also conditioned by the enactment of their Christian faith, particularly in reconciling the affective tolls engendered by their participation in lunch-counter sit-ins and by their quests to help alleviate food insecurity among impoverish populations in the American South. Indeed, when these individuals consciously endeavored to master the three dimensions of a complete life—recognize their agency, honor the interconnectedness of humanity, and seek God’s guidance in doing both—were they able to embody their best selves and demand the realization of a truly democratic nation. Full article

Starting from the ancient philosophical proposition of “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”, this article attempts to answer the different responses of different holistic theories to “1 + 1 > 2” in different times. When trying to define systems or systematism, due to the introduction of the concept of exchange and traditional holism, one must ask the question of how to sublimate them into modern systems theory? How does systems philosophy counteract-eat the traditional holism step by step and reshape holism under the framework of systematism? Full article

Analytical modeling presents symmetries and aesthetic-mathematical characteristics which are not catchable in numerical computation for science and technology; nanoscience plays a significant role in unification attempts, considering also models including holistic aspects of reality. In this paper we present new discovered results about the complete analytical quantum-relativistic form of the mean square deviation of position $R^2(t)$ related to a recently introduced Drude–Lorentz-like model (DS model), already performed at classical, quantum and relativistic level. The function $R^2(t)$ gives precise information about the distance crossed by carriers (electrons, ions, etc.) inside a nanostructure, considering both quantum effects and relativistic velocities. The model has a wide scale range of applicability; the nanoscale is considered in this paper, but it holds application from sub-pico-level to macro-level because of the existence of a gauge factor, making it applicable to every oscillating process in nature. Examples of application and suggestions supplement this paper, as well as interesting developments to be studied related to the model and to one of the basic elements of a current unified holistic approach based on vacuum energy. Full article