Philosophy of Organism / Systems Approach

The philosophy of organism is also called holistic or organismic philosophy, or 'Sytems approach'.

According to philosopher Alfred North Whitehead in 1925, organisms are 'structures of activity' at all levels of complexity. Even subatomic particles, atoms, molecules and crystals are organisms and hence in some sense alive.

From the organismic point of view, life is not something that has emerged from dead matter. All nature is alive. The organising principles of living organisms are different in degree but not different in kind from the organizing principles of molecules or of societies or of galaxies.

Whitehead put it as: "Biology is the study of the larger organisms, wheras phsics is the study of the smaller organisms." And in the light of new cosmology, physics is also the  study of the all-embracing cosmic organism, and of the galactic, stellar and planetary organisms that have come into being within it.

Think, for example of a termite colony:
A termite colony is an organism,
which is made of individual insects,
which are made up of organs,
which are made up of tissues,
which are made up of cells,
which are made up of subcellar systems,
which are made up of molecules,
which are made up of atoms,
which are made up of electrons and nuclei,
which are made up of nuclear particles.

At each level are organized wholes, which are made up of parts that are themselves organized wholes. And at each level, the whole is more than the sum of its patrs; it has an irreducible integrity.

In an evolutionary universe, the organising principles of all systems at all levels of complexity must have evolved. The organizing principles of gold atoms, for example, or of bacterial cells, or of flocks of geese, have all come into being in time. None of them was there in the first place, at the time of the Big Bang.

But were all these organizing principles already present as transcendent Platonic archetypes (ideas) waiting for their moment to first manifest in the physical universe? Or are these organizing principles more like habits that have evolved in time?!

(from Rupert Sheldrake: The presence of the past)