Brief notes on the concept of Positivistic Organicism

Organicism refers to that tendency in thought which constructs its picture of the world in an organic model. By an organismic metaphysics is meant the attempt to explain the reality as the world or the universe…

Organicism refers to that tendency in thought which constructs its picture of the world in an organic model. By an organismic metaphysics is meant the attempt to explain the reality as the world or the universe of the totality of everything, including human society, as if it were a kind of organism or had properties like an organism, such as, being ‘alive’, having a vital principle or displaying relations between parts, like those between the organs of a living body.

Positivism, on the other hand, refers to that tendency of thought which rigorously reconstructs all explanations of phenomena purely to phenomena themselves prefering explanations strictly on the model of scientific procedure, rejecting all tendencies, assumptions and ideas which exceed the limits of scientific techniques. Organicism commits to assumptions about the nature of phenomena that exceed the limits of what is immediately presented is experience as well as the limits imposed by scientific technique.

This did not stop the growth of knowledge on the basis of logical deductions. The view of idealism is based on growth of knowledge on the basis of mathematico-logical deductions. Idealism tends to refer to the visionary and prophetic attitudes toward human affairs. Philosophical idealism refers to the view that reality itself is somehow in the nature of ideas or in more moderate forms to the view that, among all the kinds of realities, ideas are the most significant. According to Plato, ideas are the only things that really exist. Each thing is what it is only through the presence of the idea in it or through its participation in the idea. An idea is the one that stands in opposition to the ‘many’ in the actual plurality of actual things. For example, one idea of ‘horse’ refers to many actual horses.

Idealism may be objective as it proposed by Hegel or it may be transcendent as it is ‘ proposed by Plato and Aristotle, or it may be subjective as proposed by the German philosopher, Leibnitz and Berkley.

George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) developed his philosophy of socio- cultural movement between 1793 and 1801. During the post- Napolean milieu idealistic heritage of the Enlightenment Period was adopted in Germany although Comte regarded Hegel as an exemplar of metaphysical phase of thought, the salient influence of both of these men was the strengthening of idealistic versions of socio-cultural determinism. In retrospect Comte was not very much less metaphysical than Hegel. Both the positivists ( Locke, Bacon) and the Hegelians viewed history as unfolding of ideas that followed a pre-determined course for unexplained reasons are and for unintelligible reasons for other. But Hegel’s notion of the role played by mental events in world history is more obscure than comte’s.

Hegel declared that the history of the world begins with the general aim, the realisation of the idea of ‘Spirit’ (Mind). This means that the potential of everything called the world spirit (mind) brings itself into full existence defined as the pure or abstracted ideal of mind. The world mind is dialectic which develops from a thesis to antithesis and to synthesis which again becomes the thesis.

Thus the ‘World Mind’ is an evolutionary process. He believed that these processes beget morally better states or existence in progressive succession, marked in human affairs by the greater and more prefect use of reason. Through reason not only man, but the ‘world mind’ achieves freedom.

Thus, the history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom. Hegel conceived the world in terms of progressive evolutionary flux. Through the pervasive evolutionism of his times, he added the peculiar notion that entities or events could be comprehended or to say the same thing, exist, only by virtue of the opposite, contradiction, negation and synthesis.

The Seventeenth Century British philosopher John Locke provided the metaphysical foundation upon which explanation of socio-cultural phenomena exists. Locke attempted to prove that the human mind at birth was an ‘ empty cabinet’. The knowledge or the ideas, with which the mind later comes to be filled, are all acquired during the process of enculturation. He was more concerned with the epistemological issue of how knowledge of ideas are established than specifically with all individuals and communities and nations come to possess such customs, traditions and ideas .His main concern was that knowledge comes through experience and the latter changes in consonance with the environmental change. He made a correlation between environment and behaviour.

His theory of environmentalism was replete with socio-cultural implications. He writes that no social order is based upon innate truths; a change in the environment result in a change in behaviour. He in his conviction said that despite differences in experience reason, correctly applied, would eventually lead man every where to similar social institutions, moral beliefs and scientific technical truth.

Adolf Bastian has termed this phenomenon ‘as psychic unity of mankind’. He also had said that human psyche being the same, social institutions vary because of differences in environment. Enlightenment philosophers laid emphasis on tolerance of alien ways. Toleration of alien ways at a later period laid to acculturation, cultural osmosis and consequential culture change. This was the view of Vico, Voltair, Montesque, Descarte, Turgot, Condercet and others.

Anne Robert Jauqes Turgot, the 25 years old genius of France attempted to unite universal history in 1750. But his duties as finance Minister under Leuis- XV prevented him from completing his research project; two discourses on Universal history. ‘Universal history’ embraces the consideration of successive progress of humanity and the detailed causes which had contributed to it. The earliest beginnings of man, the origins and revolutions of government, the development of language; of morality , custom, arts and sciences; the revolutions which had brought about succession of empires, nations and religions.

The statement of Turgot is followed by another that corresponds to one of the accepted modern definitions of culture, which reads thus; “Man is the possessor of the treasure of signs which he has the faculty of multiplying to infinity, he is able to assure the retention of his acquired ideas to communicate them to other men, and to transmit them to his successors as a constantly expanding heritage”.

Emphasis on social heritage or tradition and emphasis on symbols and signs are attributed to the writings of Turgot. Bronislaw Malinowski defined culture as follows; “This social heritage is the key concept of cultural anthropology. It is usually called culture’. According to Leslie A. White, “The cultural category of order of phenomena is made up of certain events that are dependent upon a faculty peculiar to human species, namely the ability to use symbols”. Further Leslie A. While defined culture as “extrasomatic temporal continuum of things and events dependent upon symboling”.

It is clear that” when education is equated with individual’s entire history of sense experience, the concept very similar to that of enculturation is one of the great themes of the Enlightenment period.”

One of the most important technical impressions inherent in the writing of Turgot is the doctrine of “Psychic unity”, the belief that the study of socio-cultural differences, (Hereditary ( genetic) differences cancel each other out leaving ‘experience’ as the most significant variable. The origin of this doctrine has been advanced by Turgot and Helvetius. The idea of psychic unity was not recaptured until the Boasian period.

John Locke always harped on the phenomenon of experience with regard to socio- cultural knowledge. His environmentalism was the popular surmise that races of men might exist, whose cultural exposure was so impoverished that they would be indistinguishable from animals. Jean Jacques Rousseau also implied in 1751 then it was hot beyond the power of education to accomplish the transition from ape to man.