I closed my previous post with this reflection:
"Wheels within wheels within wheels. Any assessment of my relationship with the world must recognise within my deep identity a making-whole behaviour reminiscent of the healing processes of biological and ecological systems" (McKenzie, 1996).
A distinction is sometimes drawn between ‘holism’ and ‘wholism’. For me, the notion of the natural human leaning–calling to ‘make whole’ in situations of fragmentation could fit into either category, but as I wish to contribute to the discourse on ‘holism’, a term first coined in the early 1900s by Jan Smuts, I choose that spelling.
Holism has become a popular topic of discussion. At an education conference I recently attended – the 6th International Conference on Education, Research & Innovation (ICERI 2013) – the term ‘holistic’ appeared in 106 papers. The Wikipedia entry for holism (viewed on 29 June this year) gives a sense of the breadth of use of the term – in philosophy, in at least five physical sciences and seven social sciences, and this probably barely scratches the surface of its use. While the kernel idea of the relations between parts and whole is the unifying motif across these discourses, each discipline-specific discourse is framed within the paradigm/s and expounded in the language proper to that field.
What I set out to do in my engagement with holism – as it might be applied in educational practice – has been to seek a more experiential, relatively less conceptual pathway into the idea. Thinking back now, I realise that my interest in this approach was significantly inspired by Teilhard de Chardin’s writings on the ‘human phenomenon’ and Ken Wilber’s integral model of reality. I felt there was a place in curriculum planning and teaching practice for a fresh focus on the learner’s existential stance and view of self and world. ‘We humans need a word like ‘cosmos’ – or Kosmos, from the ancient Greek, as Ken Wilber points out (Wilber, 2000, p. 45) – to name the unity of conception that we infer and crave’ (McKenzie, 2014, p. 4). The challenge I set myself in my doctoral research was
"to explore our common human need to make meaning and find meaning or purpose, even as each passing day sheds new light on the problematics of existence, asking us to reconsider the beliefs and understandings that satisfied us previously" (McKenzie, 2014, p. 4).
"We set ourselves the goal of continuously pushing back the frontiers of global understanding, of letting go of today's sense of everything as tomorrow's questions appear on the horizon. My noble calling is to progressively open myself to the mystery within and the mystery without …
"What I am alluding to here is our shared higher self ‘inkling’ that it all means something: ‘philosophical questions are important to everyone, whether or not one chooses dedication to academic study. In fact, to be human is to naturally reflect upon philosophical questions’ (Stefanovic, 2013, p. 17)" (McKenzie, 2014, p. 232).
According to this way of thinking, the common denominator that distinguishes humankind from other life – the ‘defining feature’ of humankind – is the fulfilment, the sense of arriving we gain from growth in understanding. Valuing growth in understanding, whether as a concept or an experience or both, seems to me to fit like a glove with a valuing of one’s journey to self-realisation:
"Perhaps a whole new field of reflective practice awaits us – a reconsideration of the embedded and embodied context of human meaning making, which for me is both making sense and finding meaning or purpose within: cognitive and personal/ontological development in the one crucible, realised in and through each other" (McKenzie, 2016).
… within my deep identity a making-whole behaviour…. I sense something of the healer or making whole leaning–calling in contemporary versions of the Hippocratic Oath commonly used to initiate new members into the medical profession. (See for example http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/hippocratic-oath-today.html.) Yet nurturing and making whole again is as instinctive to us as childhood, adulthood, dotage. We can all be sustainers, healers sometimes.
Wholeness bides time within you
Very early in my doctoral research journey I was tantalised by the possibility of investigating the idea of ‘meaning making’, not in an impartial way, but by sifting through my own as well as others’ experiences of growth in understanding and self-realisation, as refracted in the ‘texts’ of our lives.
Get on that wheel and turn And hear the spinning sound A wheel is not a wheel until it turns around This world was made to turn And turn And turn completely free I spin around my wheel My spinning wheel is me. (McKenzie, circa 1975)
In that period I slowly became convinced that philosophical hermeneutics offered a research method that would allow me to pursue my goal. For philosophical hermeneutics, the hermeneutic circle (see previous post) is the prize for and the price of being human (McKenzie, 2014, p. 232). ‘From whatever depths, for whatever reason, I find myself engaged in searching for a solution, the missing factor capable of integrating the fragments, the missing note bonding noises into harmony’ (McKenzie, 1996).
Take a brush and paint your horizon Ring the world you know and understand This is the world you believe in The key to your mind is at hand.
When your sight is all blurred by a smokescreen And there is no horizon line Don’t be afraid of being uncertain It’s just a sign, a sign of the times.
Draw a ring around your world With that line you define who you are The mystery stars must have a place in your vision ‘cos I’m in a global frame of mind.
Shackled feet stop the searcher from searching Blinkered eyes turn the seeker from the find Tight rings ‘round your world will stop you from growing, a perfect tourniquet for the mind.
When the rain in the pool disturbs the water Every ring in the pool will expand Small rings are swallowed up by the big ones And only the biggest reach land.
Draw a ring around your world With that line you define who you are The mystery stars must have a place in your vision ‘cos I’m in a global frame of mind. (McKenzie, 1981)
What kind of education could be conceived and brought into being if we believed that growth in understanding is ‘the realisation of an ever more complex, comprehensive and coherent sense of self in the world’ (McKenzie, 2014, p. 2)? In whatever walk of life, we can make a difference to the human phenomenon as we aspire to goal-responsive rather than conditioned-responsive thought: ‘goal-responsive thought is expressed in a life lived by embracing the undetermined future as a stimulus for creative action’ (McKenzie, 2014, p. vi).
References
McKenzie, A. (1975). Lyric for a child drama workshop at The Play Ring, Arts Unlimited, Banora Point NSW. A Whitlam Government-sponsored Innovations project.
McKenzie, A. (1981). Global frame of mind. Unpublished song lyric for the Singleton High School drama production, A medieval frame of mind.
McKenzie, A. (1996). Photogenic angles – a personal reflection on creativity. Included in Appendix 5, Shapes taking form – the creative domain of the human spirit. Improving the effectiveness of distance education for farmers, Unpublished masters thesis, University of Western Sydney, Richmond, NSW. Available here
McKenzie, A. (2014). Meaning making: A university curriculum framework for the twenty-first century. Saarbrucken: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing. ISBN 978-3-659-52667-1. Available here.
McKenzie, A. (2016, 10 May). Lived hermeneutics: Teaching as if becoming rounded and grounded through growth in global understanding is the ultimate human goal [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1rSW4Dc.
Stefanovic, I. (2013). Philosophy as lived. Holistic Science Journal, 2(2), 17-18. Retrieved from http://holisticsciencejournal.co.uk.
Wilber, K. (2000). Sex, ecology, spirituality: The spirit of evolution (2nd Rev. ed.). Boston: Shambhala.
Image: Linfa by Laysa – http://laysa.deviantart.com/art/linfa-622080725| Restrictions on use apply; see Creative Commons licence – http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/