A coral reef does not merely adapt to the ocean, it co-constitutes the living reef-ocean system. Photograph Francesco Ungaro

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Reimagining Evolution as a Creative Partnership of Wholes and Parts

by Phil Hall

Traditional ideas about adaptivity—traits that enhance an organism’s survival and reproduction within a fixed environment—fall short when seeking to understand holonic evolution. The dominant metaphor of evolution, with its emphasis on competition and conflict, drew heavily from Malthusian ideas of population pressure rather than solely from direct observations of finches or marine iguanas:

“I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species. Here, then, I had at last got a theory by which to work.” *

Holonic adaptivity offers a richer framework. It is multi-scale: each holon adapts at its own level while supporting, or at least not undermining, the levels above and below. It is bidirectional: the holon shapes its surroundings, and the surroundings, including higher-order holons, shape it in return. And it is regulatory: it actively manages the tension between autonomy and integration. This perspective demands a renewed understanding of the meaning of “evolution.”

The most accurate term for this process is co-constitution. Holons do not simply adjust to a pre-existing reality; they actively co-create the layers of reality they inhabit.

A coral reef does not merely adapt to the ocean, it co-constitutes the living reef-ocean system. Humans do not merely adapt to culture; humans and culture co-constitute each other. An ecosystem is no passive backdrop but a higher-order holon brought into being through the collective participation of all its members. This creative interplay embodies Ganzheitsplastizität, the formative plasticity of wholeness.

Evolution is not primarily about genes, survival rates, or isolated organisms. For roughly four billion years, a deeper pattern has been at work: the progressive assembly of ever more sophisticated architectures of nested wholeness.

Ganzheitsplastizität names the guiding process-principle. Through bidirectional whole-part feedback, holonic systems distribute mortality across expendable peripheries to protect integrative cores. This enables new capacities to emerge recursively across scales, steadily deepening the system’s nested wholeness over time.

Evidence abounds: our bodies regenerate trillions of cells daily; minds weave billions of neural signals into coherent experience; slime moulds form mathematically elegant networks and starlings move in murmurations. At the heart of these phenomena lies the holon; an entity that is simultaneously a whole in its own right and a part of something greater.

Understood in this way, evolution reveals a consistent (though not inevitable) directionality toward greater holonic depth: richer communication across scales and more refined integration of autonomy with interdependence. It does not merely optimise static capacity. It advances the living, developmental process of Ganzheitsplastizität, through which systems expand and become more deeply integrated, more sensitively responsive to both parts and wholes, and more coherent in their unfolding.

The Holonic Architecture

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Arthur Koestler’s concept of the holon was directly inspired by Jan Smuts’s holism. Arthur Koestler introduced the term “holon” in The Ghost in the Machine. He took Smut’s use of the Greek holos (whole) and added the suffix -on (particle). He sought to name the fundamental duality of stable natural entities: every holon asserts its own integrity while participating in the integrity of a larger whole. A cell functions as both an independent organism and a component of tissue. A person is both an autonomous individual and a member of a community. A nation is both sovereign and a node in global systems (Koestler 59-60).

The dynamic interplay between self-assertion and integration drives complexity. Ganzheitsplastizität captures a system’s capacity to be shaped by, and to shape, this tension. Closely related ideas appear in the holobiont framework, which recognises that the “individual” is often a symbiotic community, making the holobiont a central evolutionary unit (Zilber-Rosenberg and Rosenberg 723-35; Gilbert, Sapp, and Tauber 325-41; Roughgarden et al. 44-65).

The holonic perspective refuses reduction to parts or wholes alone. Reality consists of nested hierarchies in which each level holds its own integrity and bears obligations to the larger system. This is the living architecture of nature.

Evidence for the Holonic Path

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John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry document recurring transformative leaps that reconfigure part-whole relationships (Major Transitions):

• Molecules → cells
• Prokaryotes → eukaryotes
• Cells → multicellular organisms
• Individuals → societies
• Human groups → larger society

In each transition, lower-level entities are incorporated rather than eliminated. Autonomy is constrained but preserved; the higher holon acquires emergent capabilities while its parts gain protection and new roles. This recursive pattern, not linear progress or a Hobbesian Leviathan, exemplifies Ganzheitsplastizität: life repeatedly constructs higher-order wholeness that enables more sophisticated distributed intelligence.

Distributed Mortality

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All systems must manage mortality through two core strategies. Distributed mortality spreads risk across replaceable units (bacterial colonies, somatic cells, road traffic). Encapsulated mortality safeguards critical cores, where failure is rare but potentially catastrophic (the brain, commercial aviation).

The most resilient systems employ hybrid architectures featuring modularity and graceful degradation—“shrapnel survival.” The plasticity that allows reconfiguration, balance, and learning from failure is a hallmark of Ganzheitsplastizität.

The human body exemplifies this at every scale: approximately thirty-seven trillion cells undergo rapid turnover via apoptosis, while the brain (2% of body mass but roughly 20% of energy use) is protected by multiple layers of defense. Peripheral loss is routine and renewable; core failure is existential. This hybrid pattern recurs throughout biology because it proves highly effective.

Reciprocal Causation

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Richard Dawkins’s gene-centric model emphasised replicators but downplayed reciprocal causation. Higher holons actively regulate lower levels. Denis Noble’s principle of biological relativity shows that organisms use genes as tools, with physiology and cellular networks directing gene expression (Noble). Barbara McClintock’s discovery of jumping genes and James Shapiro’s concept of natural genetic engineering reveal the genome as a dynamic, responsive system. Wholeness shapes the parts, and the parts reshape the whole.

Sympoiesis (“making-with”) captures this collective creativity (Dempster). Unlike autopoiesis, sympoiesis highlights open, co-evolving systems with distributed control. Evolution becomes a multi-scale dialogue. To paraphrase the poem by Marcelino Dos Santos: What is important is not what I want or what you want, but what we want. (in M. Dickinson, 1972)

Into the Substrate

Speculatively, Ganzheitsplastizität may extend right into the substrate. Perhaps it is turtles all the way down. Douglas Hofstadter demonstrated how recursion generates strange loops and self-reference and discussed the way matter and the inanimate might give rise to living systems; to living, complex self-referential systems (Holons). The Penrose-Hameroff Orch OR model proposes that consciousness emerges from orchestrated quantum processes in microtubules, which cells can regulate, suggesting holonic nesting reaches the deepest physical levels (Hameroff and Penrose; Penrose).

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Consciousness arises at thresholds of recursive self-modeling and rich internal communication. The unified “you” generated by thirty-seven trillion cells reflects bottom-up convergence rather than top-down imposition. Bidirectional flows, upward novelty and downward coordination, transform swarms into vehicles for meaning, creativity, and awakening. This opens the door to holonic ethics: our actions serve as upward messages within larger systems.

Participation does not erase the part; it bestows expanded purpose. Wholeness plastic enough to embrace a planetary scale offers profound hope.

Conclusion

From this framework emerge clear principles of co-constitution and ganzheitsplastizität and Holonic Evolution:

1. Distributed mortality plus protected core
2. Holonic duality
3. Bidirectional causation
4. Hybrid modularity
5. Co-constitution
6. Sympoiesis
7. Emergent interiority

The principles that transformed chemistry into life, life into mind, and minds into cultures remain active today. We are gradually becoming conscious of our holonic nature. The trajectory leads not toward mere size or raw power but toward richer, more recursive wholes that must honor the integrity of their parts to survive and thrive. Of course, there are empirical and theoretical challenges in using these notions. Admittedly, terms like Holonic Evolution, co-constitution and ganzheitsplastizität are pre-scientific, but perhaps reframing evolution in this way might be suggestive and useful and help us face and understand the challenges of complexity and survival. If we are gradually becoming conscious of our holonic nature, then what practices, cognitive, social, technological, might accelerate that awareness. How do we cultivate the plasticity we are describing?

Appendix: Holarchy Diagram

                          Planetary / Global Holon

                     (Cultural-Technological-Biospheric)

                                   ▲ ▼

                       ┌─────────────────────────────┐

                       │     Emergent Interiority      │

                       │   (Consciousness / Meaning)   │

                       └─────────────────────────────┘

                                   ▲ ▼

                     ┌───────────────────────────────┐

                     │      Societal / Cultural       │

                     │        Holon (Nations,         │

                     │      Economies, Networks)      │

                     └───────────────────────────────┘

                                   ▲ ▼

               ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐

               │             Organism / Human Holon           │

               │   Protected Core (Brain, Germline)  ███████  │

               │  ────────────────────────────────            │

               │    Distributed Periphery (Somatic Cells)     │

               │     High Turnover / Apoptosis / Renewal       │

               └─────────────────────────────────────────────┘

                                   ▲ ▼

                     ┌─────────────────────────────┐

                     │      Cellular / Tissue        │

                     │         Holon (e.g. Organ)    │

                     └─────────────────────────────┘

                                   ▲ ▼

               ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐

               │          Molecular / Genetic Holon           │

               │   Dynamic Genome (McClintock/Shapiro)        │

               │   Responsive • Natural Genetic Engineering   │

               └─────────────────────────────────────────────┘

                                   ▲ ▼

                          Speculative: Quantum / Substrate Level

                     (Microtubules & Quantum Processes)

Key:
▲▼ = Bidirectional feedback loops
██████ = Protected core (encapsulated mortality)
Periphery = Distributed mortality layer

Each level embodies holonic duality: simultaneously an autonomous whole and an integrated part.

Works Cited

*Darwin, Charles. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882: With Original Omissions Restored. Edited by Nora Barlow, Collins, 1958.

Dempster, M. Beth L. “Sympoietic and Autopoietic Systems: A New Distinction for Self-Organizing Systems.” Proceedings of the World Congress of the Systems Sciences and ISSS 2000, edited by Jennifer K. Allen and Janet Wilby, International Society for the Systems Sciences, 2000, pp. 1–18.

Dos Santos, M. [Kalungano]. (1972). We must plant. In M. Dickinson (Ed. & Trans.), When bullets begin to flower: Poems of resistance from Angola, Mozambique and Guiné (pp. 28–29). East African Publishing House.

Gilbert, Scott F., Jan Sapp, and Alfred I. Tauber. “A Symbiotic View of Life: We Have Never Been Individuals.” The Quarterly Review of Biology, vol. 87, no. 4, 2012, pp. 325–41, https://doi.org/10.1086/668166.

Hameroff, Stuart, and Roger Penrose. “Conscious Events as Orchestrated Space-Time Selections.” Journal of Consciousness Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, 1996, pp. 36–53.

Koestler, Arthur. The Ghost in the Machine. Hutchinson, 1967.

Maynard Smith, John, and Eörs Szathmáry. The Major Transitions in Evolution. W.H. Freeman Spektrum, 1995.

Noble, Denis. Dance to the Tune of Life: Biological Relativity. Cambridge UP, 2016.

Penrose, Roger. The Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and the Laws of Physics. Oxford UP, 1989.

Roughgarden, Joan, et al. “Holobionts as Units of Selection and a Model of Their Population Dynamics and Evolution.” Biological Theory, vol. 13, no. 1, 2018, pp. 44–65, https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-017-0287-1.

Zilber-Rosenberg, Ilana, and Eugene Rosenberg. “Role of Microorganisms in the Evolution of Animals and Plants: The Hologenome Theory of Evolution.” FEMS Microbiology Reviews, vol. 32, no. 5, 2008, pp. 723–35, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1574-6976.2008.00123.x.

Smuts, J. C. (1926). Holism and Evolution. Macmillan and Co.

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Phil Hall was born in South Africa into an ANC family with British, French, Austrian, and German roots. After his parents were exiled, they lived in East Africa and India before returning overland to the UK. In the UK he studied Russian and Spanish literature, politics, and economics. After graduating he specialised in descriptive and applied linguistics. Phil has lived and worked in Spain, the USSR, Mexico and the Gulf. Returning to London during the pandemic, he co-founded the Humane Socialist magazine, Ars Notoria (the Art of the Noteworthy) and the micropublisher, AN Editions.