On the Principle of Treating Scientific Understanding as a Whole

Abstract

We have encountered, in the realm of contemporary scientific knowledge and comprehension, a whole series of new problems that cut across a multiplicity of fields and disciplines. Such problems include, for example, questions of ecology and energy resources; there are also enterprise-management problems, economic planning problems, as well as problems having to do with mass transit in urban areas. People have carried out many investigations and much research on these problems, and when they have applied their understanding to direct them in their work, they have garnered both experiences of success and lessons of failures. These experiences and lessons have taught us that to understand accurately problems of this type, we must follow the correct principle. The principle of integratedness, or the principle of treating things as a whole, is of the utmost importance to contemporary scientific knowledge and understanding. To propose this principle clearly and to develop it systematically has a tremendous signi...