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Doornkloof – the humble home of Jan Smuts, father of holism
Smuts was twice Prime Minister of the then Union of South Africa, the second time during the trying years of World War II, when he was simultaneously contributing to the war effort of the allies and fending off those in South Africa who were against the war effort and wanting to support Hitler against the “English”. Born on a farm in Malmesbury in the then Cape Colony on 24 May 1870, he only started going to school at the age of 12 when his older brother died. His formidable intellect and self-discipline ensured that he caught up to his fellows within four years and went on to University at the age of 16. He graduated with double firsts in literature and science, gaining him access to a scholarship which enabled him to go to Christ's College, Cambridge, where he read law and wrote a book on Walt Whitman called Walt Whitman: A Study in the Evolution of Personality which was, for various reasons, not published until 1973.
Learning-Org November 1999: Entropy production in the spiritual world LO23314
AM de Lange ( amdelange@gold.up.ac.za ) Mon, 22 Nov 1999 13:54:17 +0200 Replying to LO23278 -- Dear Organlearners, Jan Lelie < janlelie@wxs.nl > writes: >> Who was the author of "Holism and Evolution"? Jan Smuts. >> In 1948 he lost the general election in South Africa to a >> party who formulated apartheid as their ideology and policy. >> He was devastated. > >So: i guessed correctly: holism had to evolve from apartheid.
By Timothy Kalyegira If we were to ask who the greatest leader that modern Africa has ever produced is, who would that be? To many minds, it would be without a second thought, Nelson Mandela, former President of the African National Congress, former President of South Africa and Nobel Prize laureate. Others would name Gamal Nasser of Egypt, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Julius Nkerere of Tanzania or Leopold Sedar Senghor of Senegal. The list would be dominated by the men who won independence for their respective countries or who founded the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963.
Jan Smuts- ‘Great African Leader’
Holism
For the suffix, see holism . Holism (from ὅλος holos , a Greek word meaning all , whole , entire , total ), is the idea that natural systems (physical, biological, chemical, social, economic, mental, linguistic , etc.) and their properties, should be viewed as wholes, not as collections of parts. This often includes the view that systems somehow function as wholes and that their functioning cannot be fully understood solely in terms of their component parts. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] Reductionism is often viewed as the opposite of holism. Reductionism in science says that a complex system can be explained by reduction to its fundamental parts.