LSAT 102, Section 1, RC Passage 4, Organicism vs. Analytics

RC Passage 4 Explanation

Paragraph Summaries

1. Organicists criticized the scientific tendency of separately analyzing the parts of a system.
2. Organicism depends on internal relations. This says that something is changed if it has a relationship with another thing.
3. But something can enter into a relationship and not be changed.
4. If internal relations theory is true, it would be impossible to know anything.
5. Organicists misunderstood science’s analytic method. Scientists didn’t ignore the rules that govern systems as a whole.

Analysis

This passage is maddeningly abstract. There are no examples, and many words such as “entity” and “system”.

I’m going to make this passage clearer with an example. Consider the economy. It’s a system of companies and individuals (“entities”) that produce, buy and sell various products.

A scientist using the analytic method would examine each part on its own. So they might study the entity Apple Computer separately from the entity known as Microsoft. And within those companies, scientists would separately study the products, employees, etc.

Organicists think this is wrong. You can’t understand Microsoft without considering the entire global economy. Microsoft (an entity) has a defining relationship with Apple computer (another entity). Both companies are changed by this relationship.

The author points out that not every relationship is a defining relationship. Microsoft surely has some sort of relationship with General Electric, but as far as I know, it isn’t defining, and the relationship doesn’t change either company. So it’s not necessary to know every relationship to understand a company.

(third paragraph)

The author then makes a stronger criticism. An entity like Microsoft or Apple has so many relationships that it seems impossible to know them all. If Internal Relations theory is true, we can never know anything.

The final paragraph show that organicists misunderstood the analytic (scientific) method. In studying a specific company like Apple, scientists would first try to figure out which general laws affect the entire economy and would therefore affect an individual company like Apple. So scientists do not ignore the whole when they study the parts.