In the routines of everyday existence both tendencies are in constant interplay. The self-assertive tendency is manifested on every level of the hierarchies of behaviour: in the stubbornness of instinctive rituals in animals and of acquired habits in men; in tribal traditions and social customs; and even in a person's individual gait, gestures or handwriting, which he might be able to modify, but not sufficiently to fool the expert; the holons of his graphological style defend their autonomy. It is the integrative tendency, equally ubiquitous, which prevents us from becoming complete slaves of our habits and freezing into automata; it is manifested in flexible strategies, original adaptations, and creative syntheses which originate higher, more complex and integrated forms of thought and behaviour, adding new levels to the open-ended hierarchy.
2
The basic polarity is much in evidence in the phenomena of emotive behaviour on the individual and social scale. No man is an island; he is a holon. Looking inward, he experiences himself as a unique, self-contained, independent whole; looking outward as a dependent part of his natural and social environment. His self-assertive tendency is the dynamic manifestation of his individuality; his integrative tendency expresses his dependence on the larger whole to which he belongs, his partness. When all is well, the two tendencies are more or less evenly balanced. In times of stress and frustration, the equilibrium is upset, manifested in emotional disorders. The emotions derived from the frustrated self-assertive tendencies are of the well-known, adrenergic, aggressive-defensive type: hunger, rage and fear, including the possessive components of sex and of parental care. The emotions derived from the integrative tendency have been to a large extent neglected by academic psychology: one may call them the self-transcending type of emotions. They arise out of the human holon's need to belong, to transcend the narrow boundaries of the self and to be part of a more embracing whole -- which may be a community, a religious creed or political cause, Nature, Art, or the anima mundi.
When the need to belong, the urge towards self-transcendence is deprived of adequate outlets, the frustrated individual may lose his critical faculties and surrender his identity in blind worship or fanatical devotion to some cause, regardless of its merits. As we have seen earlier on, it is one of the ironies of the human condition that its ferocious destructiveness derives not from the self-assertive, but from the integrative potential of the species. The glories of science and art, and the holocausts of history caused by misguided devotion, were both nurtured by the self-transcending type of emotions. For the code of rules which defines the corporate identity, and lends coherence to a social holon (its language, laws, traditions, standards of conduct, systems of belief) represents not merely negative constraints imposed on its activities but also positive precepts, maxims and moral imperatives. In normal times, when the social hierarchy is in equilibrium, each of its holons operates in accordance with its code of rules, without attempting to impose it on others; in times of stress and crisis, a social holon may get over-excited and tend to assert itself to the detriment of the whole, just like any over-excited organ or obsessive idea.
3
The dichotomy of wholeness and partness, and its dynamic manifestation in the polarity of the self-assertive and integrative tendencies is, as already said, inherent in every multi-levelled hierarchic system, and implied in the conceptual model. We find it reflected even in inanimate nature: wherever there is a relatively stable dynamic system, from atoms to galaxies, its stability is maintained by the equilibrium of opposite forces, one of which may be centrifugal -- i.e., inertial or separative, the other centripetal, i.e., attractive or cohesive, which binds the parts together in the larger whole, without sacrifice of their identity. Newton's first law -- 'Every body continues in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line unless compelled by a force to change that state' -- sounds like a proclamation of the self-assertive tendency of every speck of matter in the universe; while his Law of Gravity reflects the integrative tendency.*
* In a science-fiction play, written many years ago, I had a visiting
maiden from an alien planet explain the central doctrine of its
religion: '... We worship gravitation. It is the only force
which does not travel through space in a rush; it is everywhere
in repose. It keeps the stars in their orbits and our feet on our
earth. It is Nature's fear of loneliness, the earth's longing for
the moon; it is love in its pure, inorganic form.'
(Twilight Bar, 1945.)
We may venture a step further, and regard the Principle of Complementarity as an even more basic example of our polarity. According to this principle, which dominates modern physics, all elementary particles -- electrons, photons, etc. -- have the dual character of corpuscles and waves: according to circumstances they will behave either as compact grains of matter, or as waves without substantial attributes or definable boundaries. From our point of view, the corpuscular aspect of the electron -- or any elementary holon -- manifests its wholeness and self-assertive potential, while its wave-character manifests its partness and integrative potential.*
* Another instance of thc polarity of inanimate nature is reflected
in Mach's Principle, which connects terrestrial inertia with the
total mass of the universe; see below, Ch. XIII.
4
Needless to say, the manifestations of the two basic tendencies appear in different guises on different levels of the hierarchy, according to the specific codes -- or 'organizing relations' -- characteristic of that level. The rules which govern the interactions of sub-atomic particles are not the same rules which govern the interactions between atoms as wholes; and the ethical rules which govern the behaviour of individuals are not the same rules which govern the behaviour of crowds or armies. Accordingly, the manifestations of the polarity of self-assertive and integrative tendencies, which we find in all phenomena of life, will take different forms from level to level. Thus, for example, we shall find the polarity reflected as:
integration <--> self-assertion
partness <--> wholeness
dependence <--> autonomy
centripetal <--> centrifugal
cooperation <--> competition
altruism <--> egotism
Let us further note that the self-assertive tendency is by and large conservative in the sense of tending to preserve the individuality of the holon in the here and now of existing conditions; whereas the integrative tendency has the dual function of coordinating the constituent holons of a system in its present stage, and of generating new levels of complex integrations in evolving hierarchies -- whether biological, social or cognitive. Thus the self-assertive tendency is present-orientated, concerned with self-maintenance, while the integrative tendency may be said to work both for the present and towards the future.
5
As the polarity of the self-assertive and the integrative tendencies plays a crucial role in our theory and will keep cropping up in later chapters, a brief comparison with Freud's metaphysical system, which achieved such immense popularity, may be of some interest.
Freud postulated two basic Triebe ('drives', or loosely, 'instincts') which he conceived as mutually antagonistic universal tendencies inherent in all living matter: Eros and Thanatos, or libido and death-wish. A close reading of the relevant passages (in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Civilisation and its Discontents, etc.) reveals, surprisingly, that both his drives are regressive: they both aim at the restoration of a past primeval condition. Eros, through the lure of the pleasure principle, tries to re-establish the erstwhile 'unity of protoplasm in the primordial slime', while Thanatos aims even more directly at a return to the inorganic state of matter though the annihilation of self and other selves. As both drives are attempting to turn the clock of evolution backward, one is left wondering how it came about that it moves forward nevertheless. Freud's answer seems to be that Eros is forced to make a long detour in gathering 'the dis
persed fragments of living substance' [1] into multicellular aggregates with the final aim of restoring protoplasmic unity; in other words, evolution appears as the product of inhibited regression, the negation of a negation, a backing forward, as it were.
As a curiosity one may note Freud's rather dim view of the working of Eros. According to this view, pleasure is always derived from 'the diminution, lowering, or extinction of psychic excitation' and 'un-pleasure* from an increase of it'. The organism tends towards stability; it is guided by 'the striving of the mental apparatus to keep the quantity of excitations present in it as low as possible or at least constant. Accordingly, everything that tends to increase the quantity of excitation must be regarded as adverse to this tendency, that is to say, as unpleasurable.' [2]
* Unlust, dysphoria, as distinct from physical pain.
Now this is of course true, in a broad sense, in so far as the frustration of elementary needs like hunger is concerned. But it passes in silence a whole class of experiences to which we commonly refer as 'pleasurable excitement'. The preliminaries of love-making cause an increase in sexual tension and should, according to the theory, be unpleasant -- which they decidedly are not. It is curious that in the works of Freud there is no answer to be found to this embarrassingly banal objection. The sex-drive in the Freudian system is essentially something to be disposed of -- through the proper channels or by sublimation; pleasure is derived not from its pursuit, but from getting rid of it.*
* One might argue that in Freud's universe there is no place for
amorous love-play because Freud, like D. H. Lawrence, was basically
a puritan with a horror of frivolity, who treated sex
'mit tierischem Ernst'. Ernest Jones says in his biography:
'Freud partook in much of the prudishness of his time, when allusions
to lower limbs were improper.' He then gives several examples --
such as Freud 'sternly forbidding' his fiancée to stay 'with
an old friend, recently married, who as she delicately put it,
"had married before her wedding" '. [3]
Freud's concept of Thanatos -- the Todestrieb -- is as puzzling as his Eros. On the one hand, the death-wish 'works silently, within the organism towards its disintegration' by catabolic processes, breaking down living into lifeless matter. This aspect of it may in fact be equated with the Second Law of Thermodynamics ** -- the gradual dispersion of matter and energy into a state of chaos. But, on the other hand, Freud's death-instinct, which works so quietly within the organism, appears, when projected outward, as active destructiveness or sadism. How these two aspects of Thanatos can be harmonized and causally connected is difficult to see. For the first aspect is that of a physico-chemical process which tends to reduce living cells to quiescence and ultimately to dust; while the second aspect shows a coordinated, violent aggression of the whole organism against other organisms. The process by which the silent sliding towards senescence and disintegration is converted into the infliction of violence on others is not explained by Freud; the only link he provides is the ambiguous use of words like 'death-wish' and 'urge to destruction'.
** We shall see later that this famous law applies only to so-called
'closed systems' in physics, and not to living organisms; but this
is a relatively recent discovery which Freud could not know.
Not only is the connection between these two aspects of the Freudian Thanatos missing, but each in itself is highly questionable. Taking the second aspect first, nowhere do we find in nature destruction for destruction's sake. Animals kill to devour, not to destroy; and -- as already mentioned -- even when they fight in competition for territory or mates, the fight is ritualized like a fencing bout and is hardly ever carried to a lethal end. To prove the existence of a primary 'destructive instinct', it would have to be shown that destructive behaviour regularly occurs without external provocation, as hunger and the sex-drive make themselves felt regardless of the absence of external stimuli. To quote Karen Horney (once an eminent, but critical psychoanalyst): [4]
Freud's assumption implies that the ultimate motivation for hostility
or destructiveness lies in the impulse to destroy. Thus he turns into
its opposite our belief that we destroy in order to live: we live
in order to destroy. We should not shrink from recognizing error,
even in an age-old conviction, if new insight teaches us to see it
differently, but this is not the case here. If we want to injure or to
kill, we do so because we are or feel endangered, humiliated, abused;
because we are or feel rejected or treated unjustly; because we are
or feel interfered with in wishes which are of vital importance to us.
It was, after all, Freud himself who taught us to seek out in apparently wanton, unprovoked acts of destructiveness, by disturbed children or adults, the hidden motive -- which usually turns out to be a feeling of being rejected, jealousy, or hurt pride. In other words, cruelty and destructiveness are to be regarded as pathological extremes of the self-assertive tendency when frustrated or provoked beyond a critical limit -- without requiring the gratuitous postulate of a death-instinct, for which there is not a trace of evidence anywhere in biology.
Turning once more to the other aspect of Freud's Thanatos, the outstanding characteristic of living substance is, as already mentioned, that it seems to ignore the Second Law of Thermodynamics, instead of dissipating its energy into the environment, the living animal extracts energy from it, eats environment, drinks environment, burrows and builds in environment, sucks information out of noise and meaning out of chaotic stimuli. 'Neither senescence nor natural death are necessary, inevitable consequences of life,' as Pearl summed it up [5]; the protozoa are potentially immortal; they reproduce by simple fission, 'leaving behind in the process nothing corresponding to a corpse'. In many primitive, multicellular animals senescence and natural death are absent; they reproduce by fission or budding, again without leaving any dead residue behind. 'Natural death is biologically a relatively new thing' [6]; it is the cumulative effect of some, as yet little understood, deficiency in the metabolism of cells in complex organisms -- an epiphenomenon due to imperfect integration, and not a basic law of nature.
Thus Freud's primary drives, sexuality and the death-wish, cannot claim universal validity; both are based on biological novelties which appear only on a relatively high level of evolution: sex as a new departure from asexual reproduction and sometimes (as in certain flatworms) alternating with it; death as a consequence of imperfections arising with growing complexity. In the theory proposed here there is no place for a 'destructive instinct' in organisms; nor for regarding sexuality as the only integrative force in human or animal society. Eros and Thanatos are relatively late arrivals on the stage of evolution; a host of creatures which multiply by fission (or budding) are ignorant of both. In our view, sexuality is a specific manifestation of the integrative tendency, aggressiveness an extreme form of the self-assertive tendency; while Janus appears as the symbol of the two irreducible properties of living matter: wholeness and partness, and their precarious equilibrium in the hierarchies of nature.
To say it once more, this generalized schema is not based on metaphysical assumptions but built in, as it were, into the architecture of complex systems -- physical, biological or social -- as a necessary precondition of the coherence and stability of their multilevelled assemblies of holons. Not by chance did Heisenberg call his autobiographical account of the genesis of modern physics The Part and the Whole.* Where indeed in micro-physics do we find the ultimate 'elementary' parts which do not turn out to be composite wholes? Where in the macro-world of astro-physics do we locate the boundaries of our universe of multi-dimensional space-time? Infinity yawns both at the top and bottom of the stratified hierarchies of existence, and the dichotomy of self-assertive wholeness and self-transcending partness is present on every level, from the triv
ial to the cosmic. The earthiest aspect of hierarchic order is reflected in what one might call 'Swift's paradigm';
So, naturalists observe, a flea
Hath smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em,
And so proceed ad infinitum . . .
* Der Teil und das Ganze in the German original.
In the English translation this was changed to
Physics and Beyond.
6
I am aware that this chapter may have seemed to oscillate between the over-obvious and the apparently abstract and speculative; yet one of the tests of a theory is that, once grasped, it appears self-evident.
There is a further difficulty inherent in the subject. The postulate of a universal self-assertive tendency needs no apology; it has an immediate appeal to commonsense, and has many forerunners -- such as the 'instinct of self-preservation', 'survival of the fittest', and so forth. But to postulate as its counterpart an equally universal integrative tendency, and the dynamic interplay between the two as the key to a general systems theory, smacks of old-fashioned vitalism and runs counter to the Zeitgeist, epitomized in books like Monod's Chance and Necessity or Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity. It may therefore be appropriate to wind up this chapter with a few quotations from a recent book by an eminent clinician, Dr Lewis Thomas (President of the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre), who can hardly be accused of an unscientific attitude. The passage starts with a fascinating description of the parasite myxotricha paradoxa, a single-celled creature which inhabits the digestive tract of Australian termites:
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