**2.1 Holism paradigm v. fragmentation paradigm**

If we take 'science' to be an organized study for the purpose of insight, a holistic science suggests a paradigm that radically differs from reductionist science. As can be seen in **Table 2**, the reductionist world view is one of separate objects that mechanistically interact; understanding comes through analyzing a system as simple, cause-and-effect interactions. A holistic world view embraces the whole of humanity and presumes unity, where forms arise though recursive interactions in the presence of energetic fields; understanding is inherently tentative and situational, producing heuristics. Reductionist principles are suitable for working with inanimate matter. They are not fit for working with living matter, humans or


#### **Table 2.**

*The ontological assumptions of reductionism and holism.*

sentient beings. To point out the obvious, engineering to serve society inherently involves living beings.

Paradigms have far-reaching consequences due to the profound and often invisible effects that mental models have on our expectations, thoughts and actions. For this reason, the pioneering systems thinker, Donella Meadows, identified "transcending paradigms" as the highest leverage intervention for systemic change [28]. Many of our present-day societal challenges—pollution, climate change, poverty, economic inequity, education inequity, and health crises, emerge from the whole and simply cannot be addressed through reductionist means. Engineering education based on holism holds the possibility of aiding our ability to more effectively address global challenges. What might such an engineering education produce?

While we cannot clearly see into what a future of engineering from holism might produce, viewing holism and reductionism through the lens of Aristotle's causality, **Figure 1**, gives us a glimpse into a possible future. Aristotle, who assumed what we would now recognize as holism, modeled phenomena as emerging from the synthesis of four causalities: material, efficient, formal and final.

The causality in the physical domain concerns matter ("material cause") and techniques of shaping matter ("efficient cause"). The domain of relationships concerns structures that inform the phenomenon ("formal cause") and the ultimate ends or intent of the phenomenon ("final cause"). Engineering education in the U.S. has largely been focused on the physical domain, giving rise to the engineered world we inhabit today. What might it look like to design an engineering education with a holistic causality? What if we situated engineering as a sociotechnical discipline? What changes might we make if we centered our purpose or final cause to serve societal well-being? How would we change informing structures like Advisory Boards, faculty hiring and retention criteria or student acceptance criteria? With a final cause of health, how might we address the structural discrimination (e.g, laws, policies, practices) against those who have historically been denied social and economic power, such as Black and Brown bodied humans? How might education develop the whole neurological structure of human intelligence, cognitive and somatic? Clearly, this holism paradigm as a POV, opens our attention, causing us to literally see, understand, and act in different ways.

#### **Figure 1.**

*Aristotle's causality. The bottom half represents causality from the domain of the physical world, suitable to reductionism: material and efficient causes. The upper half is the domain of relationships that is suitable for holism.*

**Figure 2.**

*Four stages of cell mitosis. A. Prophase B. Prometaphase C. Anaphase D. Telophase. By Roy van Heesbeen - Delta Vision Roy van Heesbeen, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mitosis.*

#### **2.2 The cell as living system archetype**

Let us consider how we might gain insight from a holism foundation by using a bacteria cell as an archetype. That is, we use here a biological model to illustrate a holistic lens for working with systems for any science, technology, engineering and math discipline. This living system cannot be separated from the universe, although we might consider the cell wall a boundary that defines the *system* from its *surroundings*. The term *system* is conceptual and refers to a set of interacting parts with a shared purpose—in the cell's case, the purpose is (presumably) living. At first glance, one might imagine that a living cell can be physically moved from its natural surroundings to a Petri dish. However, living requires the cell to exchange nutrients with its surroundings; in this way, we see that this living 'system' has an unbreakable connection with its 'surroundings'. The cell is living through its ability to maintain and replicate the conditions for its living. In what might be described as elaborate dances between molecules, the cell metabolizes nutrients and eliminates wastes or even replicates itself as shown in **Figure 2**. This property is termed *autopoiesis* ('self creation') [29]. In this system archetype we see the following properties and behaviors:


The cell itself, viewed holistically, is an emergent form that is defined by its global, self-sustaining purpose. Using systems concepts, we view the cell as an open system, communicating across its boundary. This living organism provides insight as a metaphorical archetype for effectively working with systems. Its dynamically complex properties and behavior are fractal; the fractal nature of reality is captured in the aphorism by the microbiologist Albert Jan Kluyver, "From elephant to butyric acid bacterium—it is all the same." [30].

As indicated in **Figure 3**, the recursive patterns that result in autopoiesis exist at the scale of a single cell, an ecosystem of organisms and social culture. Using a systems lens, one can identify fields at each scale within which structures interact in self-organizing and recursive ways. At the scale of an ecosystem, nutrients are exchanged by producers, consumers and decomposers. Together, they symbiotically maintain the life-giving status of the ecosystem. Within an organizational scale, the social and historical expectations, norms and states of being--such as anger, fear, joy, or relaxation--function to create social fields. One can also identify structural analogs to the cell archetype in social systems. From a holism POV, the system is 'defined' by a shared global property, such as 'living' (cell & ecosystem), or student learning (college). At the cell level, the cell-wall creates the boundary that separates the conceptual system from the surroundings. For a college, the shared goal is student learning. Other structural features of an organization are the values and beliefs that govern peoples' behavior. In a social system, such as a college, these thought structures interact with the institutional structures of rules, policies, practices and identities to produce the phenomena of learning and enculturation.

In using the cell as the archetype, we are not claiming identical features found at the cell scale and at the societal scale. We're suggesting that the patterns of the cell provide insight for working with larger dynamically complex systems. The concept of a 'system' as being defined by a global intent is an example of a pattern that crosses scales: For the bacterium and organisms in the ecosystem, the shared intent is *living*; for something like a college, the shared intent is *learning*. Because of the

**Figure 3.** *Fractal view of systems of different scales.*

#### *An Engineering Education of Holism: Einstein's Imperative DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99211*

fractal nature, working with dynamically complex phenomena would involve being attentive to *structures*, *patterns* of behavior, the quality of *relationships* and *field* conditions that might favor the emergence of one outcome over another.

What would be the appropriate scientific methods? In the next section, we will describe the relationship between methods and outcomes and suggest a holistic practice to account for this relationship.

#### **2.3 Autopoiesis in scientific methodologies: knowledge informs the mind**

As we consider the cell as an archetypal system for holistic science, one is likely to notice that there remains a great deal of unresolved mystery. What is causing these cells to undergo changes? Why exactly is it alive? What exactly is causing cells to differentiate in the emergence of a complex organism? Simply put, we do not know. Yet these questions highlight an essential difference in legacy science compared to a holistic science: reductionist science aims to answer questions, holistic science prioritizes achieving intended outcomes. Heuristic understanding occurs as a by-product in a holistic science, but it is secondary. In this way, holistic science is more aligned with engineering than reductionist science.

Holism recognizes that final cause has powerful and lasting ramifications; it functions as a seed out of which the tree and subsequent fruit arise. We can see the influence of final causality in the methods of reductionist science. They can be traced to Sir Francis Bacon, an English aristocrat and father of the empirical science method. Bacon advocated torture as a means to reveal truth [31]. He conceived of Nature as a female who hid her secrets from men, maintaining that "nature itself is something to be vexed and tortured, and that, once vexed and tortured, it will continue [as] the compliant slave of man" [32]. Bacon envisioned a utopian society, his formal causality, "for the Interpreting of Nature, and the Producing of Great and Marvelous Workes (sic) for the Benefit of Men" [33]. It was no doubt that his final cause of benefiting "man/men" was a reference to males of means, as women were often treated as property in 17th century England, a 14-year old version of which Bacon acquired as a wife at his age of 45 years [33]. Bacon represented an ethic where knowledge meant power and the interest of powerful men were deemed valuable by virtue of their (presumed) God-given superior social status. Bacon's cultural milieu, identity and position in society established a scientific practice that does not include questions about who defines the research questions and methods, whether they are socially just, or whether they are humane. Furthermore, Bacon's ideologies were influential in establishing thought in the U.S. which contributed to racists, sexist and inhumane 'scientific' practices; Bacon's ethics persist in U.S. science cultures through discriminatory practices and structures [34, 35]. For example, medical scientists in the U.S. abused African Americans for the sake of benefiting others [36–38], a rationale often used in cases of non-consensual experimentation on humans [39–41]. Such ideologies produced a biased 'science' [42] and scientists who believed that science cannot be an activity relegated to the "socially inferior" [38]; this assertion implies the reductionist fallacy that a condition that exists only in relationship to the whole (society), such as poverty, is explained by some inherent 'trait' of the individual. A science of holism would instead recognize any so-called "inferior" social condition in the U.S. as emerging from the historic, systemic effects of genocide, slavery, colonialism and legalized discrimination (e.g., see [43, 44]).

These reductionist patterns of thought and behavior ironically suggest an ontology of holism. Specifically, the condition of non-separability includes the observer as causal to what is 'observed.' Seeing co-arises with knowing so that the mind of the observer is literally *informed,* meaning that it has been physically formed, by

knowledge. In other words, knowing is an autopoietic activity. From the POV of holism, it is not surprising that a view of the world as separate objects that will reveal their truths when tortured produces objectifying science, behaviors and conclusions.

In a holistic science, rather than attempt to eliminate distortion introduced by the observer, one accounts for it by holding a disposition of recursive inquiry throughout (p. 23 [45]), asking four essential questions: How do we know our understandings are accurate? How do we know whether our practice makes sense? How do we know whether we are acting morally right and appropriate in the circumstances? How do we know we are not self-deceptive in our responses?

#### **3. Holistic science in action: navigating to shared aims**

As mentioned, holistic science is concerned with achieving the intended aims. In this way, a holistic science is a theory in action which might be better described by the word *praxis*. It is more akin to the situational navigation used by ancient cultures in navigating across open bodies of water. In order to do so, they were attentive to nuanced changes in their environment, such as the direction and quality of wind, features in and on the water, the appearance of the night sky. In response to these signals, they continually adjusted their course so they might arrive at their destination. If one were conducting a traditional laboratory experiment, changing course during the experiment would most certainly ruin one's ability to validate the hypothesis. And, a holistic praxis, which would be more suited to working in human systems, would be more concerned with serving the shared human goals and less concerned, or not at all concerned with proving cause-and-effect. Methodologies like Critical Emancipatory Action Research, or Participatory Action Research, are holistic praxes. These social science approaches share the assumptions about the holistic, inseparable nature of reality, and purpose [46] as shown in **Figure 4**.

Participatory action methods are aimed at collectively achieving a social purpose and often used in community-based social change efforts or co-design. We submit that the assumptions and aims of the participatory action methods are more strongly aligned with those of engineering.

The conception of how change takes place when working in a social system starkly contrasts with reductionism. From reductionism, Newton's laws of motion condition us to believe that force must be applied to induce change ("An object in motion stays in motion unless it is acted on by a force."); Newton's laws are certainly useful in working with non-living matter. However, using force on people raises ethical dilemmas. Returning to the cell as a system archetype, the cause of action is mysterious, yet governed by the quality of relationships, structures and fields (**Table 3**).

As an educator, the notion that the quality of relationships, structures and fields condition change is easy to see. For example, imagine that learning is the change, a classroom the setting. Imagine that a human we call "student' is living remotely to their college. They lack the infrastructure for a stable, high-speed interconnection, yet the instructor has mandated "engagement" through synchronous course dialog. Imagine that the human we call "student" is in a social field of threat and fear because of the systemic conditions of a global pandemic and insufficient internet. In this scenario, it is perhaps obvious that the quality of the learning will be conditioned by the quality of connectedness, structures and fields.

What is less obvious is the profound shaping produced by the hidden value systems in our science.

### *An Engineering Education of Holism: Einstein's Imperative DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99211*


#### **Figure 4.**

*Contrast of social science research approaches. Critical emancipatory action research is a collective form of action research. The numbers should be listed in sequential order.*


#### **Table 3.**

*The nature of change from the POV of reductionism and holism.*

### **3.1 Hidden values live in the science of engineering education**

As alluded to in the history of Francis Bacon, the value system of any science is embedded in its methods. As illustrated in **Figure 5**, the values that give rise to thought structures within the reductionist and holistic POV are quite different. **Figure 5** invites us

#### **Figure 5.**

*Reductionist and holistic values and thinking. The metaphor of an iceberg is in the background. Holism, while pictured for contrast on the right, encompasses the left and right areas of the figure. Adapted from [2, 48, 49].*

to see engineering education as a whole, arising from the force field produced by hidden values that instantiate thought structures and subsequent patterns of behavior.

**Figure 5** uses an iceberg as a metaphorical backdrop to call our attention to dynamic systemic patterns. Briefly, the inseparable coupling of gravity, the structure of the water molecule and the thermal conditions produce a buoyancy force that causes ~10% of the iceberg volume to protrude. The tip is symptomatic of dynamics that are hidden beneath the surface. One could destroy the tip (i.e., metaphorically address the symptoms) but it will be reproduced through the systemic dynamics: the gravitational field's coupling relationship with the H2O structures. Metaphorically, *values* play the role of gravity in the phenomenon that produces the tip of the iceberg; *thought structures* are like the water molecule structure; the *patterns of behavior* are like the buoyancy that results from water expanding upon freezing; the symptomatic events that emerge from the whole represent the tip. Our legacy engineering education has left us with symptoms of anthropogenic climate catastrophe, social injustice, stark inequities, political volatility and environmental degradation. We propose that an engineering education based on holism would instead produce Health.

What would an engineering education based on holism look like? We invite the global community to begin the creative process of answering that question. We offer a few thoughts, based on the principle that an autopoietic process will produce itself. In other words, the educational means of achieving the ends of health/wholeness must also have the quality of wholeness/health.

We first point out that holism includes reductionism. Reductionist science has value and we would first need to reflect on what we might conserve from our legacy methods. An ideal holistic engineering education would be balanced in its values and methods, producing discernment for choosing the methods that are fit for the purpose at hand. The value system in a Holism stance is captured in this simple imperative: *Honor the whole.* Here, the emphasis is on the whole, not just its parts. Similarly, an engineering education based on holism would embrace diversity in all its forms, not privileging one way of being over others, but dignifying all in an ethic of mutual respect. Such an education would honor the whole person as well, embracing emotions as natural and essential to meaningful learning, rather than something to suppress.

Some who feel strongly aligned with legacy science might argue that thought and emotion are separate realms with science falling within the domain of 'reason'. This logic is ironic on at least two counts. The first is that this view originated with Descartes. He deduced his idea to separate the intellect from intuition through *dreaming* [47], a highly irrational phenomenon. Secondly, from the second law of thermodynamics, we see that the spontaneous direction of change in the universe is in the direction of increasing diversity of states of being*.* Another way of looking at this second law principle is to conclude that where a lack of diversity exists, one can be assured that energy is being exerted to make that happen. While we are speaking in metaphor, the reader can readily test the clarity of this metaphor; do emotions arise spontaneously? (Here we are treating the different emotions as different states of being) Does it take energy, chemical or otherwise, to maintain a single emotional state? The same tests can be applied to other social systems. Let us say engineering education programs are somewhat uniform in their developmental outcomes; are there energetic forcing functions that produce such uniformity or is this uniformity occurring spontaneously? From these simple tests for coherence, we can see that a fragmented view is neither grounded in nor consistent with its own science; fragmentation is socially-constructed.

An engineering education derived from holism would be attentive to the quality of relationships in the learning environment. By relationships, we refer to the nature of what connects people: a holistic education would invite people to connect through purposes that transcend self-assertive interests. In the face of conflict people would turn to their shared purpose, larger than their self-interests, to resolve issues. One who viewed the world and work of an engineer as dynamically complex would expect conflict ("chaos") as a natural part of the process, rather than something to be eliminated. In other words, engineers would embrace the messy process of collaboration in social and political settings as a central and essential activity.

An engineering education that recognized the truth of holism would be attentive to the quality of structures that condition the learning. For example, the rise of academic capitalism [50] in the U.S. has institutionalized standardized testing for college entrance [51]. Because the standardized test was developed to validate a theory of white supremacy, this college entrance structure has produced structural discrimination against non-white populations. In the U.S., the engineering profession is depleted of diversity in perspectives by structural barriers at different scales: familial, classroom, institutional, regional, societal, and historical. To honor the whole of our collective humanity, an engineering education would do the painstaking work of revisioning just and equitable educational structures, policies and practices.

The work of revisioning just and equitable structures must recognize the fallacy of framing engineering as totally objective, meritocratic and free of social influences. This framing has been challenged by Cech and others in noting a Eurocentic discipline that fails to recognize the influence of race and gender on epistemologies and practice [52–54]. From the POV of holism, the framing is not a fact, it is an artifact: the autopoietic result of legacy science's originating mental models.

Honoring the whole would translate to honoring the whole of our humanity, recognizing the Descartes fallacy of "thinking" as primary. What we are learning from neuroscientists is that human intelligence is distributed throughout the body, rather than centrally controlled from the cerebral cortex as once believed. That is, the structure of our whole intelligence includes bodily sensations, often outside our conscious awareness. Feelings, presumed irrelevant to engineering curricula, are now recognized as essential to learning [55]. It is perhaps obvious that emotions are essential to empathy and moral reasoning; they are what humanizes us. A holistic engineering education would cultivate our ability to constructively work with our whole intelligence, managing our neurological states of being and honoring ways of knowing that include intuition, artistic expression and the lived experience. Of critical importance is cultivating our appetite for beauty. As Maxine Greene has taught us, beauty feeds the social imagination necessary to envision just alternatives to the world we have [56]. Given the autopoietic nature of our minds, the value of putting our attention on beauty is the possibility of generating beauty.

Finally, an engineering education from holism would develop skillful means in working with *social fields*. The notion of social fields was proposed by Lewin in his work with Holocaust survivors [57]. In his treatise, he used the analog and mathematics of electromagnetism to describe *social fields*—conceived as an energetic force that produced action at a distance—using reductionist concepts. However, the concept of an energetic social field can easily be seen in phenomena like social contagion or mob mentality. Additionally, the activity of mirror neural networks [58, 59] from a holistic POV confirms that shared, visceral human experiences can co-arise through observing another person; a witness can mirror the same neurological activation *as if* they were engaged in the observed activity. In terms of learning, a holistic engineering education would recognize how the quality of the social field conditions the ability for learning. For example, recent findings reveal the wide scale prevalence of trauma in the young adult population in the U.S. [60]. Such adverse childhood experiences become neurologically embodied, compromising peoples' ability to self-regulate and remain calm—the only state in which one can integrate new knowledge [61], **Figure 6**. Trauma effectively shrinks our "window of tolerance" for distress. An engineering education from holism would support learners' ability to manage their neurological state of being and metabolize adaptations that displace us from learning.

#### **3.2 Preliminaries: where do we start?**

In a world of urgency, we ironically feel our first action is to pause and reflect. If learning is an autopoietic action, we who have been conditioned through a western education may first need to unlearn. At minimum we will need to expand our ability to sense beyond what is presently available to us. The danger is that any action we take from our present condition will arise from the structures of our western education and thereby worsen the situation. So, our first need is to renounce the primacy of thought and cultivate a holistic neurological intelligence that includes abilities to sense and integrate our feelings. Perhaps coincident with unlearning

#### **Figure 6.**

*Nerve activation states from polyvagal theory. (Adapted from [61, 64]). The vertical axis represents the level of nervous system arousal, which naturally varies. One is able to self-regulate natural variations in arousal state within the window of tolerance. Chronic stress diminishes one's resilience (i.e., effectively shrinks the window of tolerance).*

the hidden dynamics of reductionism, we will need to apprehend the language and methods of holism. Engineering classrooms, as evidenced by syllabi, can draw on semantic frames which foster social fields of fear in classrooms [62]. We will need to re-language engineering if we desire safe social fields.

Another task is to identify what to conserve from reductionism. What balance of competencies are relevant for engineers to be humane and effective in a world of dynamic complexity? Surely reductionist science is important and applicable. What concepts do we preserve in a holistic engineering education? We, as an engineering community, need to do the difficult work to unlearn, rethink and learn. As educators, learning the skillful means of managing our neurological states of being would benefit ourselves and the people we call 'students.' Chari and Singh have developed such neuroscience-grounded training [63]. We have field-tested their methods in a recent online course; we and our students experienced their practices as significantly aiding our learning.

Within this new direction of holistic learning, we will also need to generate new methods for understanding our effectiveness. There are those who are skilled at working with managing change through holism [65]. However, the challenge for us disciples of reductionist science is to suspend judgment that arises from our unexamined mental models. A helpful heuristic is to notice when we react with strong emotions in the context of academic questions. That is an opportunity to reflect on the four essential questions: How do we know our understandings are accurate? How do we know whether our practice makes sense? How do we know whether we

are acting morally right and appropriate in the circumstances? How do we know we are not self-deceptive in our responses?
