In his book Sex, Ecology and Spirituality, Ken Wilber comprehensively sets out his ideas on holons. Generically, he call thes ideas "tenets".  Beginning in the next posting, I want to use Ken's ideas as a starting point for a broad discussion on the our understanding of the complex world outside ourselves and of which we are part.

Sid Luckett 

In the 2^nd chapter (The Pattern that Connects) of SES, Ken has a collection of propositions regarding the ‘existence’ of holons:
a) Reality as a whole is not composed of things or processes, but of holons.
b) There are no things or processes only holons
c) Clearly some things exist, and some processes exist,  but the are each and all holons
d) Therefore this releases us from the utterly futile attempts to find common processes or common entities on all levels and domains of existence, because that will never work; it always leads to reductionism, not true synthesis.

These propositions are in the domain of ontology (what is real, what exists) and epistemology (how can we know about what exists). Ken’s take on these issues will be discussed in my postings in this forum and  my starting point will be a general one regarding the intelligibility of the mysterious world in which we find ourselves

Sid Luckett

Anyone who is interested can pick up on this discussion in the the thread, "Systems: An Interpretive Approach" starting from posting # 48754 on 2008-05-03

Sid Luckett