Replying to LO27755 --
Dear Organlearners,
Fred Nickols <nickols@att.net> writes:
>>Wholeness is more than the sum of its parts.
>>That is the description of Jan Smuts and it is
>>the common definition.
>
>That is also the definition of "gestalt" as I learned
>that term so many years ago. Are "holism" and
>"gestalt" one and the same?
Greetings dear Fred (and Leo),
The definition "the whole is more than the sum of its parts" which Smuts
gave to the OED was for holism. His description for wholeness was "the
whole with its field".
Yes, I think that Jan Smuts' "holism" and Karl Jung's "gestalt" are the
same thing. I do not know when Jung first used the word "gestalt", but
Smuts already used "holism" in 1913. He wanted to publish his "Holism and
Evolution", but his learned friends and professors at Cambridge University
discouraged him. They said that as one of the most intelligent students
who ever walked the campus (some 700 years old) he would draw his name
through the mud with this work. Finally, in 1926 he dared to publish it.
Thank you Fred for your hamburger example. It is very good (for those who
have eaten a hamburger ;-) Here in Africa there are millions of starving
people who have not even seen a hamburger.
I have learned one crucial lesson. To INTRODUCE a person to wholeness one
has to honour that person's wholeness by using an example from the
person's "world of experience".
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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