Subject-headings:
Spirituality ; Systems science ; Circularity ; Autonomy
Abstract
The central point made in this
contribution is that a convergence may be emerging
between the discovery by science, specifically by systems
science, of the notion of wholeness and its existential
nature, and the dimension of the spiritual experience.
The starting point of the paper is the need for a new
vision and for new mental tools to apprehend the numerous
and unexpected ecological, social and economical problems
of modern societies; these problems are essentially due
to the almost exclusive use of the reductionist
empirico-rationalist paradigm. The diagnostic made here
is that when complex situations are analyzed as
aggregates of simpler situations, unexpected outcomes are
due to happen. Systems science, with the holistic notion
of system and with the cybernetical notion of circular
causality, is a promising tool to interpret complex
self-organizing systems.
The expansion of systems science,
especially of the holistic aspect of systems may be
slowed down by the difficulty for mainstream scientists
to naturalize the notion and the existential nature of
wholeness. The remark that, in history, the theoretical
notions have often followed the practice, as was the case
for the notions of energy and of information, gives the
hope that the increasing confrontation between
contemporary human beings and complex, strongly
interdependent, therefore holistic situations, will
trigger the emergence of holistic concepts.
After giving some indications about the
nature of spirituality, of the spiritual experience, and
of the Philosophia Perennis, we summarize the main
features of a holistic metamodel to interpret the
dynamics of self-organizing systems and their evolution
toward complexity and autonomy. An important consequence
of this metamodel is that the reality of the world is not
reduced to its material aspect, but has two equally
important aspects: material-objectal and
immaterial-relational, the conjunction of which forms the
existential whole. In the last part, we suggest some
correspondences with the spiritual tradition.
