Sidney, Ralph:
Sidney, you ask some very relevant questions!
"Are Holons Real?" A very elegant and massive question. I am completely sincere when I say that it really depends on what "are," "holons," and "real" mean.
Let me ask you this: from which quadrant would you prefer an answer? Would you prefer examples of holons existing in the material world individually or in a system, or would you prefer the answer to point to subjective and interior apprehension of their existence or inter-culturally manifested apprehensions?
Isn't this a fundamental prerequisite to getting a meaningful answer to the question "Is X real?"
I am wondering if you are functioning as a Zen Master presenting a koan. Is that your intention? Fine if you are, I like a good koan. But I am also wondering if you are sincerely wrestling with the notion of "are holons real?" or as the Chinese say, "tossing out bricks to attract jade."
With regard to the relationship of structures and holons, would you agree that one can conceptually draw the lines and name the hierarchy of structures in any number of ways? Isn't it most useful to admit that the explication of a given set of hierarchical structures is merely a tool for orientation and does not mirror a fundamental series of dividing lines in any reality one wishes to speak of?
So let's agree for practical purposes that there are "structures" that represent large spaces of phenomenal complexity where many horizontal translation activities take place from each of the 4 quadrants. It would seem most useful to regard holons as the filling for the structures, and one could also extend it and regard the structures themselves as holons. Or one can speak of the structures as structures in order to bridge a vocabulary gap with "speakers of foreign languages" (i.e. persons who are familiar with "structures" as a meaningul term.)
A practical issue that must always be addressed is how much of the existing vocabulary to use when presenting what appear to be novel or refined ideas.
I like your invitation to think of a lake and its systems. A very useful and elegant place to focus on the issue.
Another orienting example I like to think of is the human body and its relationship to what is ostensibly outside of it. At what point when I exhale does the gas no longer belong to "me?" At what point does dirt on my skin become me?
Let me share with you a notion that I have serious respect for. You know how prostitution has traditionally been stigmatized? It seems odd. After all, the women are people, God's creatures, and they are hurting no one, right?
Well, in a very real sense, what a prostitute is is a walking garbage can. I mean that in only the most literal sense. They take in the bodily fluids from untold numbers of men and those fluids become them. These are men for whom they have not the slightest love or affection. In a sense, they are perverting the most precious facet of our nature.
So, the next man who kisses or penetrates a prostitute in a very real sense is getting a big feast of communal excreta. One quite literally is mixing ones blood with the juice of any number of men who came before. This is inherently repulsive and probably not wise hygiene. And to me, that explains the stigma of prostitution.
And that is simply the upper right example. One can also extend it to a lower left perspective and talk about the velleities and insincerities and mixed signals and inter-personally incoherent junk that one takes on board when consorting with a prostitute.
So, in a sense the discussion of holons implicates a discussion of virtue and health.
Is not cancer, in a sense, and I am not merely speaking from an upper right perspective, a case of holons gone haywire? The inherent boundaries have gone berserk. Things that belong to one holon are erupting and spreading to many other holons.
Let me share with you my 4 quadrant theory on cancer. The best approach is to be reminded that in a very high percentage of cases, those who are afflicted with cancer are the nicest, sweetest, most friendly people you will meet. It seems absolutely perverse that "God" would choose them to visit cancer upon, while the cranky people, the stubborn people, those who march to the beat of a different drummer, rarely are found with cancer.
The evolution of the world is such that each day there is more and more danger of holons collapsing within each 4 quadrants. Holons can be viewed as phenomenological organs. They must receive, they must transmit, but their essential boundaries must not rupture.
In the upper left, my individual dominion and relationship with spirit is challenged more and more by a world that only regards as real that which is physical, in the lower left, the cultural constructs are less and less sincere and informationally accurate as advertising and politics fill us with disinformation back by ulterior motives, in the upper right I am bombarded with new combinations of viruses, food that is not food, and pollution, and in the lower right, I get the sense that the systems which I physically observe and function within no longer have a center that is holding. In each quadrant, the attack on the integrity of the holons is stronger.
And the only remedy to this is to be massively and passionately stubborn about truth, beauty, and the good (as you seem to be!), not accepting of non-sense, unwilling to "take on" anything within any quadrant without first processing it (to use a Gestalt concept - chewing it completely before swallowing), and to be willing to give names to both the good and the bad in the universe, inasmuch as they both exist. This orientation to the post-modern world ensures that the relationships among holons remain healthy and intact.
Now, back to the notion of borders.
Remember George Carlin proposing that to earn a little extra money one might rent out the space inside one's nose? You can partition the area off into nanometer sized sectors, make a map available and allow people to visit their rental space on-line in a Google Map sort of quest. They can even store things there, have parties and concerts there, and sub-let the space. No pets, though!
I would call you as an expert witness when I am sued in a very real lower right court by one of my tenants who claims that regarding the area I leased to him I did not have lawful title to, and it was in fact public lands.
The solution to this would of course be to regularly spray one's nostrils with a solution that creates a crust, thereby bolstering the argument that the space at issue is not public but is more akin to the way nations draw the lines of their sea areas across the mouths of bays and the like. There is no better border inside my nose that a layer of crust!
As a matter of fact, I can lease the area inside of my nose to you, and you can sub-lease it!
This may seem odd, but my nose has more physical reality than the space people are leasing in Second Life! So, this option would be marketed to people who want a little more reality than Second Life offers them.
You guys want to start a thread offering to lease, using payment involving the holon "universal market value units" instead of U.S. currency, the space inside our noses? As weird as it sounds, it could raise some very serious discussions about what is real and what isn't.