Background
Smuts, Jan Christian was born on May 25, 1870 in Riebeck West, Cape Colony.
Smuts, Jan Christian was born on May 25, 1870 in Riebeck West, Cape Colony.
Victoria College of Stellenbosch and Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he studied Law.
1919-1924, Prime Minister of South Africa. 1930, FRS; 1931^1, Rector of University of St Andrews. 1936-1950, Chancellor of Cape Town University.
1948-1950, Chancellor of University of Cambridge.
As an undergraduate at Cambridge the subject of personality greatly interested Smuts and he wrote a short work on ‘Walt Whitman: a study of the evolution of personality’. This study and a sequel, ‘An inquiry into the whole’ (1910), were never published. When, in 1924, a change of government released him from the burdens of office, he made a fresh start with his study of wholes and ‘holism’ in nature which resulted in Holism and Evolution (1926). Smuts’s thesis is that ‘holism’ or ‘wholemaking’ is a primordial factor underlying the creative evolution of the universe. The history ol nature advances through a linked hierarchy of four principal phases of increasing complexity and integration, namely, matter, life, mind and personality, each phase emerging as a clearer and fuller embodiment of ‘wholeness’ than its predecessor. He argues that this evolution is not the product of an immanent teleology; rather, it is possible only on the assumption of the ‘holistic factor’ operative throughout as a vera causa, productive of genuine novelty. The appeal of an evolutionary philosophy such as that of Smuts may have diminished, but the ideas of wholes and wholeness have gained wide currency ¡n many different disciplines.