Analysis—Synthesis
By Roberto Poli 1. Introduction. The Need for a New Vision
To date, modern science has relied on an essentially analytic strategy. Different sciences have been developed in order to efficaciously segment the whole of reality into classes of more or less uniformly connected phenomena. The guiding idea has been that phenomena occurring within each class are more causally homogeneous than phenomena pertaining to other classes, so that the task of explaining their behavior should be more easily accomplished. This divide et impera (divide and rule) strategy has proved immensely successful, at least for some regions of reality. Other regions have proved more refractory, for a number of serious reasons. The first is that different regions may require different types of causation, some of which are still unknown, or only partially known. A second reason is that for some regions of reality the analytic strategy of breaking items down into pieces does not work properly. A third and somewhat connected reason is the lack of a synthetic methodology.
The underneath of a spiral staircase in the Cathedral de Justo, currently under construction in Madrid, Spain.The complexity of reality requires the analytic strategy of segmentation into categorically homogeneous regions. This first move is not questioned. However, some regions contain only items that can be further analytically segmented into pieces. These items are entirely governed by their parts (from below, so to speak). Other regions contain items with different patterns: they depend not only on their parts, but also on the whole that results from them, and eventually also on higher-order wholes of which they are parts (e.g., organisms, communities).
Mainstream science, however, has defended and still defends the idea that sooner or later all types of reality will be analytically understood. The outstanding successes achieved by analytic methods, however, come at a price: namely the fragmentation of all types of entities into their lower-order parts, especially material parts. Not only are living entities seen as nothing other than biochemical reactions, but also mental phenomena are supposedly completely understood in terms of brain dynamics. Moreover, persons are seen as agents, and furthermore as individual (i.e., isolated), purely egoistic agents, as if they were atoms within a container.
More profoundly, the analytic process of fragmentation creates apparently insurmountable barriers (1) between physical and biological sciences, (2) among the natural, cognitive and social sciences, and (3) among science, philosophy and religion. The world itself becomes fragmented and loses its integrity. The fact is that analysis may inadvertently destroy the relational linkages that are crucial in the study of ‘living’ systems. Synthesis, on the other hand, is a natural procedure with which to study emergence: the (unanticipated) relational connections that appear when a multitude of component systems interact. To give but a single example, it is enlightening to observe our wealthy societies: apparently, the result of the systematic adoption of purely analytic methods is that wealthy societies become increasingly wealthy, while people and societies themselves seem to become more and more internally fragile.
The main problem is that at least some items cannot be fragmented without losing relevant information. Organisms, persons, and communities are some of the striking cases. When they are fragmented and reduced to their ‘matter’ they lose their most essential property: life for organisms and spirit for persons and communities. Analytic methods deprive persons and communities of their spirit.
Admittedly, our understanding of non-fragmentable items is still deficient. Otherwise stated, there is no denying that a properly developed method of synthesis needs to be developed. Many scholars doubt that it will ever be developed or acquire scientific respectability. Indeed, reductionism as a general position can be seen as the answer provided by those who believe that an inclusive synthetic picture will never be achieved.
Science, as it has been developed during the past few centuries, has no internal capacity to distinguish responsible from irresponsible projects. Scientists may be deeply responsible persons, or fathers/mothers, or citizens, but there is no way internal to science to draw the boundary between responsible and non responsible research projects and applications. This state of affairs can be seen as a consequence, possibly one of the most important ones, of the overwhelming prevalence of analytic strategies.
These factors notwithstanding, awareness is starting to spread that something has gone wrong within mainstream science (and, let us add, philosophy as well). As successful as analytic methods may be, at some point they fail properly to grasp the phenomena under consideration. At some point something different is required, something gentler and more respectful of the integrity of the phenomena themselves.
The availability of both strategies (analytic and synthetic) will enable the development of a more articulated, integral, respectful and responsible vision of the world.
The synthetic vision required is anything but antiscientific. We defend science in all its aspects. At the same time, however, we struggle for a more integral science, a science able to integrate its many branches, a science able to dialogue, to teach and to learn from both philosophy and theology. This vision heads toward a New Humanism, a spiritual achievement that may be able to bridge many of the cleavages that segment our culture into isolated and isolating islands. As a side remark, it may be worth noting that the trend toward more and more complex forms of analytic specializations seems to have substantially contributed to the general feeling that universities are failing badly in their roles.
The misplaced faith in analytic, reductionist methods follows almost unavoidably from the lack of a correct ontology, and in particular from the lack of both a theory of wholes and their parts and a theory of levels of reality. More often than not, scholars defending otherwise widely different theories of spirituality have advocated some form or other of the theory of levels (also known as the theory of aspects of reality). Thinkers who have taken this approach include Husserl, Stein, Ingarden, Hartmann, Conrad-Martius and Dooyeweerd. All of them have realized that without a properly developed theory of levels of reality, the deep, ontological differences between organisms, minds and spirits become easily blurred.
Following a somewhat different path, some scientists have also advocated the shift towards synthetic methods (Bohm and Rosen, among others). Carl W. Hall, former deputy assistant director, directorate for engineering, of the National Science Foundation (USA), started a paper of his entitled “The Age of Synthesis” with the following words: “As we enter the 21st century we are in the beginning stages of a new age of synthesis, philosophically and technologically. … This new age of synthesis is being built on and utilizes the emphasis on analysis featured in the 20th century”. And then continued: “Synthesis provides a framework for guiding analysis, research, development, management, and education” (Hall, 1996, p. 12). James F. Danielli, director of the Center for Theoretical Biology in Buffalo (1965-1974) and also the founder and long-time editor of the Journal of Theoretical Biology (1962-1984) regularly used the expression “age of synthesis”. Danielli was describing the three ages in the science of modern biology as the age of observation ® age of analysis ® age of synthesis. But the description is just as appropriate for science in general.
Read the rest of the article.
No comments:
Post a Comment