Science is changing. It is recognising that a reductionist, materialist approach which has dominated science for almost three hundred years, fails to deal with the evidence which is now being collected.   

In the life sciences – including biology, physiology and medicine – scientists are questioning the very basis of the reductionist, materialist assumptions which underpins current understanding.  They are realising that we cannot explain how whole systems work simply by understanding the parts.  For example, we now know now that we cannot explain how the human body works purely by understanding the molecular structure of our genes, but that genes are affected by the wider environment, culture and ultimately the way the whole planet works.   

Neuroscience is also telling us that this focus on the parts is a core function of the left half of our brain, and that to see the bigger picture, we need to unlock the power of our right brains.  Activities such as meditation can quiet the left brain and we can start opening up our consciousness to the deeper reality which the right brain can access. In fact, Dr Iain McGilchrist, psychiatrist, neuroscientist and philosopher – a lead thinker of our time – says that we cannot separate our understanding of the world from the way the two halves of the brain work.  The left brain sees the world as made up parts which it literally cannot put together and the right sees it as an indivisible interconnected whole which is much closer to the ultimate truth.  

This change in science, represents no less than a paradigm shift: the whole determines how the parts behave as much as the parts determine the whole.  It opens up a way understand how, for example, the planet can behave as a self-sustaining, self-regulating whole, with the mathematics of Active Interference and the Free Energy Principle as developed by Prof Karl Friston being used to model how systems self-organise.   

This move away from reductionism is so challenging to most scientists today, that it is causing huge turmoil – as profound as when Copernicus started to question the orthodox view that the sun went around the earth.  It goes so deep that scientists like Professor Denis Noble, are calling for us to fundamentally change our teaching of science at school and university.   

This systems science, or holism rather than reductionism, provides the scientific context in which OnePlanet sits, helping users think in systems, see the big picture and collaborate on joined-up actions. 

For more, read our ‘Science of OnePlanet’ page on our website.