Holism

Holism is the idea that natural systems (physical, biological, chemical, social, economic, mental, linguistic, etc.) and their properties, should be viewed as wholes, not as collections of parts. This often includes the view that systems somehow function as wholes and that their functioning cannot be fully understood solely in terms of their component parts.

Reductionism is often viewed as the opposite of holism. Reductionism in science says that a complex system can be explained by reduction to its fundamental parts. For example, the processes of biology are reducible to chemistry and the laws of chemistry are explained by physics.

Social scientist and physician Nicholas A. Christakis explains that "for the last few centuries, the Cartesian project in science has been to break matter down into ever smaller bits, in the pursuit of understanding. And this works, to some extent...but putting things back together in order to understand them is harder, and typically comes later in the development of a scientist or in the development of science".

Holism Media

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  Smuts considered natural processes (such as evolution) to contain emergent properties.

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  This Feynman diagram illustrates the path of an electron (e−) and a positron (e+) within a quantum field that could be described in terms of Bohmian mechanics.

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  Systems biology aims to understand how genes and proteins function together to form organisms like this animal cell.

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  Systems medicine considers holism to better understand part-whole relationships as with microbial-host coevolution.

Related pages

• Gestalt psychology
• Interdisciplinarity
• Theory of everything