What Does Holism Mean? Between Science, Nature, and Spirituality

Antibiotic Resistance

At present, we are seeing more and more people asking questions about wholeness and naturalness. But what does that mean? – Let us take an obvious example: medicine.

On the one hand, we see modern medicine, which produces medications from isolated individual substances. In the case of Artemisia annua, for example, one of more than two hundred and fifty substances naturally contained in the plant is isolated. This isolated active ingredient, artemisinin, is then administered against malaria – and is also being investigated in research in connection with cancer and Lyme disease. At first, the results achieved are convincing. After a certain period, however, resistance to the active ingredient develops, as is currently being observed with malaria. The drug is becoming increasingly unusable.

We know the same problem from the field of antibiotic resistance. Antibiotics, too, are generally produced from isolated individual substances, such as penicillin. And, lo and behold, resistance to them develops over time. Thus begins an arms race with nature: a stronger active ingredient is needed – resistance develops; an even stronger active ingredient is needed; resistance develops. The website of the Federal Ministry of Health states:

«For a long time, following the discovery of penicillin, we believed that we had a miracle weapon against infectious diseases. In the meantime, however, germs are increasingly demonstrating their resistance. Pathogens that are resistant to certain active pharmaceutical ingredients are emerging and spreading. The inappropriate use of antibiotics contributes to this. Modern medicine is at risk of losing valuable achievements in the pharmaceutical sector once again. The selection and further spread of resistant pathogens can, in particular, be minimized through more appropriate prescribing of antibiotics.»

See also: German Antibiotic Resistance Strategy 2020

If this game cost nothing, it would not be so bad. Unfortunately, pharmaceutical research consumes ever-increasing sums of money – money that is not available, particularly in developing countries, where medicine is most urgently needed. Do we perhaps need to fundamentally rethink things at this point?

On the one hand, then, we have a form of medicine that relies entirely on isolating active ingredients. At first, the results are outstanding, but over time problems arise that were not sufficiently considered. The context was disregarded.

The World Agriculture Report

We are experiencing the same thing in modern agriculture, by the way. At first, it appeared that the phytosanitary products of the petrochemical industry would usher in a new era of fertility and limitless productivity. Until it became clear that there was also a downside to the coin. And so more and more people are questioning the limitless use of chemicals.

« In 2008, more than 400 scientists summarized the state of knowledge about global agriculture, its history, and its future on behalf of the World Bank and the United Nations. This World Agriculture Report is uncomfortable and alarming, warns against misguided paths, and presents solutions.»

See also: World Agriculture Report.

On the other hand, we see the trend of ‹Back to Nature›. Homeopathy, naturopathy, and organic food are becoming increasingly popular. The great danger I see in this is throwing out the ‹baby with the bathwater›. Not everything conventional medicine offers is bad. And much of what is advertised as an alternative is simply hocus-pocus.

Of course, I would rather eat a vegetable that has not been sprayed with poison. Naturally, I personally would rather drink Artemisia tea than swallow a tablet. – But is that already the whole answer to the problem? We cannot turn back the wheel of time. No matter how much we long for ‹the good old days›, time moves inexorably forward.

Beyond Dualism

Let us take stock: Neither isolating substances alone nor blindly clinging to premodern methods and philosophies seems to move us forward. Both camps possess part of the truth. I believe, however, that what is truly needed goes beyond both. Neither orthodox conventional medicine nor so-called alternative medicine is the solution to the puzzle unless we fundamentally rethink things. But what could this new thing we are seeking be?

We must realize that beneath every external phenomenon lies an unspoken worldview. The farmer who – in good faith – sprays his fields with poison does not know that his actions are based on a materialistic worldview. He simply acts without reflecting on it.

If we go to the root of almost all modern problems, from the ecological crisis to the rising suicide rate in industrialized nations, we find a worldview deeply rooted within us: dualism.

And this is not meant theoretically. I am speaking of what underlies our real, daily, practical actions, not what we tell ourselves or think we believe while ultimately acting in a dualistic and materialistic way.

Dualism separates body and mind, self and world, this world and the hereafter. The term ‹environment›, as Dr. Hemmerich once observed, is already the beginning of environmental pollution. A traditionally living Indigenous person could not pollute the environment because there was no environment for them.

For premodern people, there was no separation between self and world. The environment was a shared world. Human beings were part of a shared world. People lived in clans or within a social order that was given ‹by the gods›.

This was also the case here in Europe until a few hundred years ago. In many cultures, this premodern consciousness still prevails today. These peoples still have ahead of them what we in Europe have been going through for centuries: the isolation of the individual from society, the scientific analysis of the world, the ‹death of the gods›.

A New Spirituality

So what is to be done? Do we continue moving toward greater isolation and, through that isolation, find our way to a new wholeness? A wholeness that does not erase the individual. A wholeness in which I am allowed to retain my reason?

For our emotional life, fleeing into the premodern world may offer temporary fulfillment. I believe, however, that we can and should take reason and everything we owe to it with us into the future. Falling back before the Enlightenment and barricading ourselves in esoteric pseudo-worlds is not an alternative for me. I want to participate actively and take my place in the world!

One of the people who articulated this problem most clearly and who, in my view, came closest—at least toward the beginning of a solution—was the physicist David Bohm.

Bohm attempted to establish a new physics capable of explaining both Einstein’s theory of relativity and the phenomena of quantum physics. To this day, the theory of relativity and quantum physics stand side by side as incompatible theories. Both theories appear to be true, but both cannot be true simultaneously. The ‹theory of everything› that physicists are seeking today, and that Bohm also sought, must therefore encompass both.

Bohm arrived at the model of the ‹implicate order›. Bohm distinguishes between the explicate order—the world of space and time that we can measure—and the implicate order—the level of reality in which neither space nor time exists, and in which everything is instantaneously interconnected.

One could easily dismiss Bohm’s theory as esotericism if experiments had not long since confirmed quantum entanglement—including in spectacular experiments between the Canary Islands of La Palma and Tenerife. The Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox was for a long time merely a thought experiment. In the meantime, entanglement has become an experimental fact. Today, it is being put to technological use, for example in quantum cryptography—although physics does not permit instantaneous data transmission, to be honest.

Let us look at a hand. Let us place the fingers of this hand into a water surface. Let us imagine that we are a water strider, a creature whose home is the surface of the water. To the water strider, the individual fingers appearing in its world seem like separate islands that it can examine independently. What the water strider does not see is the hand to which the individual fingers belong.

This example allows us to see how what appears separate to us—the explicate reality in space and time—is in truth interconnected—the implicate order. To see this, however, we would need to go beyond the familiar dimensions of space and time, just as the water strider would have to go beyond its two-dimensional world to recognize the hand in three-dimensional space.

So we need a leap in consciousness. We need a different perspective from the one we have been trained to adopt so far. What could this new perspective be?

I describe what this holistic perspective has to do with health in the narrower sense in What Is Salutogenesis? Understanding Health According to Antonovsky.

Find the complete overview in our comprehensive Salutogenesis overview.