Holism

8. Holism. General Information:
Holism (from ὅλος holos, a Greek word meaning all, whole, entire, total), 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 cannotbe 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. Christakisexplains 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."[3]
Holism as an idea or philosophicalconcept is diametrically opposed to atomism. Where the atomist believes that any whole can be broken down or analyzed into its separate parts and the relationships between them, the holist maintains that the whole is primary and often greater than the sum of its parts. The atomist divides things up in order to know them better; the holist looks at things or systems in aggregate and argues that wecan know more about them viewed as such, and better understand their nature and their purpose.

The early Greek atomism of Leucippus and Democritus (fifth century B.C.) was a forerunner of classical physics. According to their view, everything in the universe consists of indivisible, indestructible atoms of various kinds. Change is a rearrangement of these atoms. This kind of thinking was areaction to the still earlier holism of Parmenides, who argued that at some primary level the world is a changeless unity. According to him, "All is One. Nor is it divisible, wherefore it is wholly continuous.... It is complete on every side like the mass of a rounded sphere."

In the seventeenth century, at the same time that classical physics gave renewed emphasis to atomism and reductionism,Spinoza developed a holistic philosophy reminiscent of Parmenides. According to Spinoza, all the differences and apparent divisions we see in the world are really only aspects of an underlying single substance, which he called God or nature. Based on pantheistic religious experience, this emphasis on an underlying unity is reflected in the mystical thinking of most major spiritual traditions. It alsoreflects developments in modern quantum field theory, which describes all existence as an excitation of the underlying quantum vacuum, as though all existing things were like ripples on a universal pond.

Hegel, too, had mystical visions of the unity of all things, on which he based his own holistic philosophy of nature and the state. Nature consists of one timeless, unified, rational andspiritual reality. Hegel's state is a quasi-mystical collective, an "invisible and higher reality," from which participating individuals derive their authentic identity, and to which they owe their loyalty and obedience. All modern collectivist political thinkers - including, of course, Karl Marx - stress some higher collective reality, the unity, the whole, the group, though nearly always at the costof minimizing the importance of difference, the part, the individual. Against individualism, all emphasize the social whole or social forces that somehow possess a character and have a will of their own, over and above the characters and wills of individual members.
The twentieth century has seen a tentative movement toward hoilism in such diverse areas as politics, social thinking, psychology,...