"Holism is therefore a viewpoint additional and complementary to that of science, whose keywords are continuity and mechanism. The ideal of science is continuity, and its method is based on the analysis of things into more or less constant elements or parts, the sum of whose actions account for the behaviour of these things. Things, thus become mechanisms of their parts; and the interactions of their invariable parts in a homogeneous time and space according to the rules of mechanics are sufficient to account for all their properties. This mechanistic scheme applies even to living bodies, as their material structures determine the functions which constitute life characters. Mind is similarly, though much more doubtfully, based on physical mechanisms and functions. Life and mind are thus considered as derivative and epiphenomenal to matter."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Systems scientistsMilitary leaders from South AfricaPrime Ministers of South Africa‎Academics from South AfricaPhilosophers from South Africa
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jan_Smuts
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Jan Smuts
Jan Christiaan Smuts (24 May 1870 – 11 September 1950) was a South African statesman, general, and intellectual. Amongst the offices that he held, he was Prime Minister of South Africa and Field Marshal in the British Army.
58 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Jan Smuts →
Related Quotes
"The groans of the dying and the blanched set faces of the dead ... were enough to drive away all unwholesome feelings…"
"History writes the word 'Reconciliation' over all her quarrels."
"The war was fought throughout and ultimately won, not only by the usual military weapons in the narrower sense, but b…"
"The grand success of the British Empire depends not on its having followed any constitutional precedent of the past b…"
"At the vital moment there seems to be a failure of leadership, and also a failure of the general human spirit among t…"
"I view it as a thoroughly bad peace – impolitic and impracticable in the case of Germany, absolutely ludicrous in the…"
"It was the human spirit itself that failed at Paris. It is no use passing judgments and making scapegoats of this or …"
"If there was to be equal manhood suffrage the whites would be swamped all over South Africa by the blacks and the who…"
"The Mountain is not merely something eternally sublime. It has a great historical and spiritual meaning for us ... Fr…"
"... the Jameson Raid was the real declaration of war."