1. Reality as a whole is not composed of things or processes, but of holons (wholes that are parts of other wholes).

2. Holons display four fundamental capacities.

AGENCY & COMMUNION (“HORIZONTAL” CAPACITIES):

• Agency: “Because every holon is a whole/part, it has two ‘tendencies’ or two ‘drives,’ we might say—it has to maintain both its wholeness and its partness. On the one hand, it has to maintain its own wholeness, its own identity, its own autonomy, its own agency. If it fails to maintain and preserve its own agency, or its own identity, then it simply ceases to exist. So one of the characteristics of a holon, in any domain, is its agency, its capacity to maintain its own wholeness in the face of environmental pressures which would otherwise obliterate it. This is true for atoms, cells, organisms, ideas.”
• Communion: “But a holon is not only a whole that has to preserve its agency, it is also a part of some other system, some other wholeness. And so, in addition to having to maintain its own autonomy as a whole, it simultaneously has to fit in as a part of something else. Its own existence depends upon its capacity to fit into its environment, and this is true from atoms to molecules to animals to humans. So every holon has not only its own agency as a whole, it also has to fit with its communions as part of other wholes. If it fails at either—if it fails at agency or communion—it is simply erased. It ceases to be.”

SELF-TRANSCENDENCE & SELF-DISSOLUTION (“VERTICAL” CAPACITIES):

• Self-Dissolution: “If a holon fails to maintain its agency and its communions, then it can break down completely. When it does break down, it decomposes into its subholons: cells decompose into molecules, which break down into atoms, which can be ‘smashed’ infinitely under intense pressure. The fascinating thing about holon decomposition is that holons tend to dissolve in the reverse direction that they were built up. And this decomposition is ‘self-dissolution,’ or simply decomposing into subholons, which themselves can decompose into their subholons, and so on.”
• Self-Transcendence: “But look at the reverse process, which is the most extraordinary: the building-up process, the process of new holons emerging. How did inert molecules come together to form living cells in the first place? … Evolution is a wildly self-transcending process: it has the utterly amazing capacity to go beyond what went before. So evolution is in part a process of transcendence, which incorporates what went before and then adds incredibly novel components. The drive to self-transcendence thus appears to be built into the very fabric of the Kosmos itself.”

3. Holons emerge.

“The wholeness of the holon is not found in any of its parts, and that puts an end to a certain reductionistic frenzy that has plagued Western science virtually from its inception. Particularly with the systems sciences, the vivid realization has dawned: we live in a universe of creative emergence.”

• “As ‘ultimate categories’—which means concepts that we need in order to think about anything else at all—Whitehead listed only three: creativity, one, many. (Since every holon is actually a one/many, those categories really come down to: creativity, holons.)”
• “New holons creatively emerge. Creativity, holons—those are some of the most basic categories that we need to think of before we can think about anything else at all!”
• “Out of Emptiness, holons creatively emerge.”

4. Holons emerge holarchically.

“Holarchy is Arthur Koestler’s term for natural hierarchy … A natural hierarchy is simply an order of increasing wholeness, such as: particles to atoms to cells to organisms, or letters to words to sentences to paragraphs. The whole of one level becomes a part of the whole of the next. In other words, natural hierarchies are composed of holons. And thus, said Koestler, ‘hierarchy’ should really be called ‘holarchy.’ He’s absolutely right. Virtually all growth processes, from matter to life to mind, occur via natural holarchies, or orders of increasing holism and wholeness—wholes that become parts of new wholes—and that’s natural hierarchy or holarchy.”

• “The only way you get a holism is via a holarchy. When holists say ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,’ that means the whole is at a higher or deeper level of organization than the parts alone—and that’s a hierarchy, a holarchy. Separate molecules are drawn together into a single cell only by properties that supersede the molecules alone—the cell is holarchically arranged. And without holarchy, you simply have heaps, not wholes. You are a heapist, not a holist.”
• “All evolutionary and developmental patterns proceed by holarchization, by a process of increasing orders of wholeness and inclusion, which is a type of ranking by holistic capacity. This is why the basic principle of holism is holarchy: the higher or deeper dimension provides a principle, or a ‘glue,’ or a pattern, that unites and links otherwise separate and conflicting and isolated parts into a coherent unity, a space in which separate parts can recognize a common wholeness and thus escape the fate of being merely a part, merely a fragment.”
• “The perennial philosophy maintains that reality is a Great Holarchy of being and consciousness, reaching from matter to life to mind to Spirit. Each dimension transcends and includes its junior dimension in a nested holarchy, often represented by concentric circles or spheres.”
• “The traditional Great Holarchy of Being, matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, with each level transcending and including its predecessors. Moving upward from the center (matter, the most fundamental) is the process of evolution (Reflux or Ascent, driven by Eros), and moving downward from spirit (the most significant) is involution (Efflux or Descent, driven by Agape). Each higher level is an emergent, marked by properties not found in its predecessors. Spirit is both the highest level (which transcends all, includes all), and the equally present Ground of each level (represented by the paper).”
• “Spirit is both the highest ‘level’ in the holarchy, but it’s also the paper on which the entire holarchy is written. It’s the highest rung in the ladder, but it’s also the wood out of which the entire ladder is made. It is both the Goal and the Ground of the entire sequence.”