"The world ... needs a brand of institution where all people can gain an overview of the problems that beset their age. These, too, must be institutions of excellence, but they must be committed not to specialization but to integration of knowledge and the development of a holistic vision. ...

The overview we all require is not a simplification but an integration of the latest fruits of contemporary knowledge. Such integration is an ongoing task and it must have a home base. ...

It may appear that the task is too ambitious; that it calls for creating a new 'renaissance man', able to master the full range of the knowledge of his time. In reality the requirement is more modest. Given the current revolution in the sciences, achieving a holistic overview does not call for individual genius. The task can be systematically attempted; indeed, there are a few institutions that attempt it already.

Centers for holistic learning have a vital role in the crucial nineties. ... There must be institutions that provide a forum for informed individuals who make it their life's ambition to follow current developments in the sciences, the arts, and the religions, and to integrate them in consistent views of man, nature and society. This means doing more than putting concepts and theories side by side one after another, as in a dictionary or an encyclopedia; it means to show how insights and theories cohere into a complete organic whole.

Through the holistic alliance of science, art, religion, and education, we could learn to view the problems and challenges of this age of bifurcation as elements in a complex but unitary historical process. Our times of transition would be seen from mutually complementary angles. From the angle of the sciences, it would be perceived as the evolution of a specific variety of complex system, in which the laws of system development take on the forms and characteristics proper to contemporary humanity in its global milieu."

Slots and Values
ref	p92-3
source	Unnamed