After a lecture on cosmology and the structure of the solar system, James was accosted by a little old lady.
“Your theory that the sun is the centre of the solar system, and the earth is a ball which rotates around it has a very convincing ring to it, Mr. James, but it’s wrong. I’ve got a better theory,” said the little old lady.
“And what is that, madam?” inquired James politely.
“That we live on a crust of earth which is on the back of a giant turtle.”
Not wishing to demolish this absurd little theory by bringing to bear the masses of scientific evidence he had at his command, James decided to gently dissuade his opponent by making her see some of the inadequacies of her position.
“If your theory is correct, madam,” he asked, “what does this turtle stand on?”
“You’re a very clever man, Mr. James, and that’s a very good question,” replied the little old lady, “but I have an answer to it. And it’s this: The first turtle stands on the back of a second, far larger, turtle, who stands directly under him.”
“But what does this second turtle stand on?” persisted James patiently.
To this, the little old lady crowed triumphantly,
“It’s no use, Mr. James—it’s turtles all the way down.”
J. R. Ross, Constraints on Variables in Syntax, 1967
Holons are “whole/parts” — the building blocks of the universe (all-that-is). The Cosmos is composed of holons; there is no part that is not a whole, and no whole which is not a part.
If you look at your hand — your whole hand — you’ll notice it’s made of parts. Four fingers, a thumb, a palm, etc. Look at one of them, your whole finger, and it too is made of parts, and so is any one of those parts.
This also goes in the other direction. Those parts make up your whole finger, which is part of your whole hand, which is part of your whole arm, and so on. You yourself are a part of your household, your neighborhood, state, nation, species, and so on. Parts go all the way down and all the way up. Atoms build organelles, organelles build cells, cells build life, life builds ecosystems. Everything is a holon.
Am I a whole or a part? A separate self or am I connected? Am I a wave or the ocean? It’s not a matter of whether something is part or whole (that’s Black and White Thinking), everything is both part and whole.
Eastern thought likes to say that each of us are like waves who forget they are really the ocean, but we’re both. I like to change metaphors and say we’re more like pieces in an unfathomably large jigsaw puzzle. Buddhists might agree and say the lines that divide one piece from another are an illusion, but I don’t think that’s true. The lines between the pieces mean each of us has a unique and important role to play, and that without us the puzzle is not complete.
The Integral Guide to Well-Being, Holons, 2024
There is one self made of other selves, and those selves are made from yet-smaller selves in turn, potentially all the way down to the neuron level. Every self is a result of parts working in tandem to the point of seeming invisible. Any new self is made from what was already there, and it will not last forever. There is always change.
There is the we-without-I, the we-within-I, and the we-beyond-I. Perhaps there are higher layers still. I have not reached them yet.
Self-authored, Discord conversation, 2024