Holons
Holons
Wilber's View
A holon — a term Wilber borrows from Arthur Koestler — is a whole that is simultaneously a part of some other whole: an atom within a molecule, a cell within an organ, a person within a family. Wilber's claim in Sex, Ecology, Spirituality is stronger than "some things are holons": reality is composed entirely of holons, at every level, with no upward or downward limit — there are no freestanding "things" or "processes" beneath or above the holon pattern.
Every holon displays four fundamental capacities, which Wilber treats as a package: the capacity to preserve its own wholeness (self-preservation), to function as a cooperating part of something larger (self-adaptation), to give rise to genuinely novel higher-order wholes (self-transcendence), and, potentially, to come apart along the same lines it was built up (self-dissolution). See holarchy for how holons organize across levels — this page stays with what a holon is.
In Sex, Ecology, Spirituality
"Reality as a whole is not composed of things or processes, but of holons…"
- Reality as a whole is not composed of things or processes, but of holons. Composed, that is, of wholes that are simultaneously parts of other wholes, with no upward or downward limit. To say that holons are processes instead of things is in some ways true, but misses the essential point that processes themselves exist only within other processes. There are no things or processes, only holons.
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, Book 1: The Pattern That Connects (tenet 1)
"Holons display four fundamental capacities: self-preservation, self-adaptation, self-transcendence, and self-dissolution."
a. Self-preservation. All holons display some capacity to preserve their individuality, to preserve their own particular wholeness or autonomy. A hydrogen atom, in a suitable context, can remain a hydrogen atom. It doesn't necessarily display intentionality in any developed sense, but it does preserve its agency over time: it manages to remain itself across time's fluctuations—it displays self-preservation in the simple sense of maintaining identity across time.
b. Self-adaptation. A holon functions not only as a self-preserving whole but also as a part of a larger whole, and in its capacity as a part it must adapt or accommodate itself to other holons.
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, Book 1: The Pattern That Connects (tenet 2)
"A new and in some ways unprecedented holon emerges… different wholes have come together to form a new and different whole."
c. Self-transcendence (or self-transformation). When an oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms are brought together under suitable circumstances, a new and in some ways unprecedented holon emerges, that of a water molecule. This is not just a communion, self-adaptation, or association of three atoms; it is a transformation that results in something novel and emergent—different wholes have come together to form a new and different whole.
…
Some writers, such as Koestler, lump together self-adaptation and self-transcendence and refer to them interchangeably, because both embody a type of "going beyond." But apart from that similarity, the two are different in degree and in kind. In self-adaptation or communion, one finds oneself to be part of a larger whole; in self-transformation one becomes a new whole, which has its own new forms of agency and communion.
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, Book 1: The Pattern That Connects (tenet 2c)
"Holons that are built up… can also break down."
d. Self-dissolution—Holons that are built up (through vertical self-transformation) can also break down. Not surprisingly, when holons "dissolve" or "come unglued," they tend to do so along the same vertical sequence in which they were built up (only, of course, in the reverse direction).
— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, Book 1: The Pattern That Connects (tenet 2d)
See Also
- holarchy — how holons organize into nested levels
- dominator-vs-growth-hierarchy — what can go wrong when holarchy turns pathological
