Organic is a word I avoid. It has some useful, well-defined applications (such as in chemistry). But its more often used in vague ways by new age types. In some connotations “an organic view of life” is redundant and doesn’t say anything. That introductory phrase is weak.
Dualism is the view that mind and body are two different “substances”: that mind cannot be explained as a physical process. In contrast, physicalism is the view that everything, including the mind, can be understood in terms of physical entities, forces, process, etc. It is the view most compatible with the scientific outlook. Another contrasting idea is idealism. Here, everything is a product of a disembodied mind. There are no bodies. There is nothing physical.
All three stances are responses to our experience that mind and body seem to be different things. Once it was inconceivable that mind could be a product of mere biological “machines”. To propose a process of mind in any way comparable with the process of digestion would have been taken as demeaning to our identity. The ideas of spirits and souls took hold in our language and understanding. Humanism, and more specifically the scientific outlook, seeks to replace these traditional views with a more rational and evidence-based view.
Is that what you were looking for?
PC
