A First Look at Unity, Duality, and Complexity

Science, as we understand it in Western culture, arose during the Golden Age of Greece. Greek mystics in the sixth century B.C. did not distinguish science from philosophy and religion, but combined them in an endeavor to discover the "essential nature" of things, which they called Physis. (Capra, 1975) Heraclitus of Ephesus proposes in Concerning Nature (ca. 500 B.C.) that all things are in a continual process of "Becoming"; (Capra, 1975) He depicts a world composed of paired opposites (hot/cold, wet/dry, etc.) which struggle eternally to dominate one another. Each pair of warring opposites simultaneously exists as a unity, which contains and transcends them. (Capra, 1975) Heraclitus uses Logos, the Greek word for reason, to describe the principle of order and intelligibility which governs the interplay of opposing forces. He compares his universal principle to fire, and uses fire to symbolize "the continuous flow and change of all things." (Capra, 1975)

The dynamism which Heraclitus propounds was opposed by Parmenides of Elea, who believed "Being" to be something unique and invariable. (Capra, 1975) Whereas Heraclitus taught that whatever appears to be static is deceiving, Parmenides considered change to be impossible, and apparent changes to be illusions of the senses. (Capra, 1975) Philosophers in the Periclean Age sought to reconcile the Heraclitian and Parmenidian views. They concluded that Parmenides' "Being" implies certain indestructible and invariable substances, which would soon be termed "atoms." These indivisible units moved, but they were not responsible for their own motion; their mixture and separation was the result of forces first described as Heraclitus' "Becoming." This distinction between an object and its mover gave rise to the division between "matter", the "building blocks" of which are atoms, and "spirit", a force fundamentally different from matter. From this distinction arose the duality of mind and matter, body and soul. (Capra, 1975) Twenty-five hundred years later, we have yet to restore their unity.

Aristotle's organization and codification of Greek science and culture became the basis of the Western view of the universe, and underscored the line between body and spirit indelibly. Aristotle advanced the preeminence of spiritual concerns, subjugating the bodily and material. This attitude has been propagated and exploited by the Christian church since its inception. The most extreme philosophical formulation of the mind/matter duality was developed by Descartes, in the seventeenth century. Descartes based his view of nature "on the fundamental division into two separate realms: that of the mind (res cogitans) and that of matter (res extensa).