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| {{distinguish|-holism}}
| | '''Holism''' (from the Greek ''holos'', "all, whole, entire") is the position that a system and its properties must be understood as a whole, and cannot be fully accounted for by decomposing it into parts and treating the parts separately. Its opposite is '''reductionism'''. |
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| '''Holism''' or '''whole-ism''' (from Greek ''holos'' "all, whole, entire") is the position that systems and their properties should be understood as wholes rather than as collections of parts. Its opposite is '''reductionism''', the programme of explaining a system by decomposing it into constituents and accounting for the constituents separately.
| | The term was coined by Jan Christiaan Smuts in ''Holism and Evolution'' (1926), who held that wholes are the real factors in the universe and that the tendency to form wholes is a fundamental principle in nature. The word has since been applied very widely — in philosophy of language, where the meaning of a sentence is held to depend on a whole language; in the philosophy of science, where Duhem and Quine argued that a hypothesis is never tested in isolation but only as part of a whole body of theory; and in systems theory, ecology and medicine. |
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| On this wiki the distinction is not merely philosophical. A large part of the material catalogued here is holistic in an exact and technical sense: it holds that the properties of a local object — its inertia, its mass, even its identity as a particle — are '''constituted by its relations to the rest of the universe''', and cannot be assigned to it in isolation. That is a substantive physical claim, and it is the point on which many of the theories documented here part company with the [[Standard Model]]. This article gives the general concept and its history, and then sets out where holism appears in the physics catalogued on this wiki.
| | In physics the mainstream position is not straightforwardly reductionist either. Emergent and collective phenomena — superconductivity, phase transitions, spontaneous symmetry breaking — are standard cases in which a system has properties that its constituents do not, and quantum mechanics describes entangled systems by a single state that cannot be factorised into states of the parts. |
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| ==Holism in natural philosophy== | | ==Holism in natural philosophy== |
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| The reductionist programme has been extraordinarily successful, and it is worth stating what it has achieved before setting out the case against its sufficiency: essentially all of chemistry, solid-state physics and molecular biology proceeds by decomposing systems into parts and treating the parts. The holistic objection is not that this fails, but that it '''cannot be complete''' — that some properties are relational at the outset and disappear under decomposition.
| | On this wiki holism carries a stronger and more specific meaning than "the whole is more than the sum of its parts". A large part of the material catalogued here holds that the properties of a local object — its inertia, its mass, even its identity as a particle — are '''constituted by its relations to the rest of the universe''', and cannot be assigned to it in isolation. That is a physical claim rather than a methodological preference, and it is one of the points on which the researchers documented here part company with the [[Standard Model]]. |
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| Several distinct strands of that objection run through this wiki. | | Several distinct strands of that claim run through this wiki. |
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| ===Mach's principle=== | | ===Mach's principle=== |
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| The oldest and most concrete is '''[[Mach's Principle|Mach's principle]]'''. [[Ernst Mach]] argued that the inertia of a body is not an intrinsic property but is determined by its relation to all the other matter in the universe — that Newton's rotating bucket reveals rotation relative to the fixed stars, not relative to absolute space. If this is right, then '''no local measurement of inertia is a measurement of a local property''': the mass in ''F'' = ''ma'' is a fact about the whole cosmos. This is holism stated as a physical hypothesis rather than a methodological preference, and it remains a live thread here, with its own [[:Category:Mach's Principle|category]]. | | The oldest and most concrete is '''[[Mach's Principle|Mach's principle]]'''. [[Ernst Mach]] argued that the inertia of a body is not intrinsic but is determined by its relation to all the other matter in the universe — that Newton's rotating bucket reveals rotation relative to the fixed stars, not relative to absolute space. If that is right, '''no local measurement of inertia is the measurement of a local property''': the mass in ''F'' = ''ma'' is a fact about the whole cosmos. This is holism stated as a physical hypothesis, it makes a quantitative demand, and it remains a live thread here with its own [[:Category:Mach's Principle|category]]. |
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| ===Bohm's implicate order=== | | ===Bohm's implicate order=== |
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| The most fully developed treatment is '''[[David Bohm]]'s'''. In ''[[Wholeness and the Implicate Order]]'' (1980) Bohm argued that the apparent separateness of objects belongs to an "explicate" order unfolded from a deeper '''[[Implicate and explicate order|implicate order]]''' in which everything is enfolded in everything else — the hologram being his standing analogy, since each region of a hologram carries information about the whole image. Bohm took the fragmentation of the world into independent parts to be a habit of thought imposed on the phenomena rather than read from them, and he regarded quantum non-locality as evidence that the habit fails. | | The most fully developed treatment is '''[[David Bohm]]'s'''. In ''[[Wholeness and the Implicate Order]]'' (1980) Bohm argued that the apparent separateness of objects belongs to an "explicate" order unfolded from a deeper '''[[Implicate and explicate order|implicate order]]''' in which everything is enfolded in everything else — the hologram being his standing analogy, since each region of a hologram carries information about the whole image. Bohm regarded the fragmentation of the world into independent parts as a habit of thought imposed on the phenomena rather than read from them, and took quantum non-locality as evidence that the habit fails. |
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| ===Absorber theory and the wave structure of matter=== | | ===Absorber theory and the wave structure of matter=== |
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| A third strand makes the whole-universe dependence explicit in the equations. '''Wheeler and Feynman's''' absorber theory (1945) treats radiation from an accelerated charge as involving a response from all the absorbing matter in the universe, so that the radiative behaviour of one electron implicates every other. [[Milo M Wolff]] builds directly on this: in "[[Einstein's Last Question: What is an Electron?]]" the in-wave of each electron is composed of the out-waves of all other particles, giving the formula that '''every charged particle is part of the universe and the universe is part of every charged particle'''. [[Peter Kohut]]'s "universal connection" principle, set out in "[[The Bipolar Structure of Particles and Interactions]]", makes a similar claim from a different starting point. | | A third strand puts the whole-universe dependence into the equations. '''Wheeler and Feynman's''' absorber theory (1945) treats radiation from an accelerated charge as involving a response from all the absorbing matter in the universe, so that the radiative behaviour of one electron implicates every other. [[Milo M Wolff]] builds directly on this: in "[[Einstein's Last Question: What is an Electron?]]" the in-wave of each electron is composed of the out-waves of all other particles, giving the formula that '''every charged particle is part of the universe and the universe is part of every charged particle'''. [[Peter Kohut]]'s "universal connection" principle, in "[[The Bipolar Structure of Particles and Interactions]]", reaches a similar position from a different starting point. |
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| ===Plasma cosmology and the large scale=== | | ===Plasma cosmology and the large scale=== |
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| '''[[Anthony L Peratt]]''' and '''[[Eric J Lerner]]''' argue for a different kind of holism: that structures at galactic and intergalactic scale are shaped by currents and fields spanning enormous distances, so that a galaxy cannot be modelled as an isolated gravitating island. Here the objection to reductionism is that the boundary conditions usually imposed — treating a system as isolated — are the very thing in dispute. | | '''[[Anthony L Peratt]]''' and '''[[Eric J Lerner]]''' argue for holism of a different kind: that structures at galactic and intergalactic scale are shaped by currents and fields spanning enormous distances, so that a galaxy cannot be modelled as an isolated gravitating island. Here the objection is that the boundary conditions ordinarily imposed — treating a system as isolated — are the very thing in dispute. |
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| ===Thermodynamic and cosmological objections=== | | ===Thermodynamic and cosmological objections=== |
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| [[Glenn Borchardt]] and others in the infinite-universe tradition object to reasoning that applies to the universe as a whole conclusions derived for closed subsystems — the heat death argument being the standard case. The dispute over whether [[Entropy|entropy]] arguments transfer from a box of gas to the cosmos is precisely a dispute about whether the whole may be treated as a big part. | | [[Glenn Borchardt]] and others in the infinite-universe tradition object to applying to the universe as a whole conclusions derived for closed subsystems, the heat-death argument being the standard case. Whether [[Entropy|entropy]] reasoning transfers from a box of gas to the cosmos is precisely a dispute about whether the whole may be treated as a very large part. |
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| ===Where the objection is weakest===
| | ==Where the argument is weakest== |
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| Holism is easier to assert than to cash. Three cautions are worth recording, and they apply to material on this wiki as much as anywhere. | | Holism is easier to assert than to cash, and three cautions apply to material on this wiki as much as anywhere. |
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| First, '''"everything is connected" is not by itself a theory'''. To do physical work a holistic claim has to specify what the connection is, how strong it is, and how it falls off with distance — Mach's principle is interesting precisely because it makes a quantitative demand, and vaguer formulations do not. | | First, '''"everything is connected" is not by itself a theory'''. To do physical work a holistic claim must say what the connection is, how strong it is, and how it falls off with distance. Mach's principle is interesting precisely because it makes that demand; looser formulations do not, and cannot be tested. |
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| Second, '''holism does not license instantaneous action'''. Quantum entanglement is genuinely non-local in the sense Bell's theorem makes precise, but the '''no-communication theorem''' forbids using it to send a signal, and [[Bell's Theorem|Bell]] violations do not establish a causal channel between distant systems. Arguments here that slide from entanglement to instantaneous influence overreach the result they cite. See [[Quantum Entanglement]]. | | Second, '''holism does not license instantaneous action'''. Quantum entanglement is genuinely non-local in the sense [[Bell's Theorem|Bell's theorem]] makes precise, but the '''no-communication theorem''' forbids using it to send a signal, and a Bell violation does not establish a causal channel between distant systems. Arguments that slide from entanglement to instantaneous influence claim more than the result they cite supports. See [[Quantum Entanglement]]. |
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| Third, the mainstream is '''less reductionist than the argument often assumes'''. Emergent and collective phenomena — superconductivity, phase transitions, symmetry breaking — are standard physics in which the properties of the whole are not present in the parts, and gauge field theory is thoroughly relational. The interesting question is not whether wholes have properties their parts lack, which is uncontested, but whether particular properties such as inertia are relational in Mach's stronger sense. | | Third, the interesting question is '''not whether wholes have properties their parts lack''', which no one disputes, but whether particular properties — inertia above all — are relational in Mach's stronger sense. That is an empirical question, and it is the one worth pressing. |
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| ===On this wiki===
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| * [[Implicate and explicate order]] — [[David Bohm]]'s framework, and ''[[Wholeness and the Implicate Order]]'' | | * [[Implicate and explicate order]] — [[David Bohm]]'s framework; ''[[Wholeness and the Implicate Order]]'' |
| * [[:Category:Mach's Principle]] — inertia as a relation to the whole universe | | * [[:Category:Mach's Principle]] — inertia as a relation to the whole universe |
| * [[Holistic Physics]] — [[William Day]]'s 1998 book | | * [[Holistic Physics]] — [[William Day]]'s 1998 book |
| * "[[Holistic Physics in a Self-Organizing Universe]]" | | * "[[Holistic Physics in a Self-Organizing Universe]]" |
| * "[[On Measurements with Contradictory Results; Tracing the Roots of the Original Wholeness]]" | | * "[[On Measurements with Contradictory Results; Tracing the Roots of the Original Wholeness]]" |
| * [[Alfred North Whitehead]] — process philosophy, cited by Smuts below | | * [[Alfred North Whitehead]] — process philosophy, an influence on Smuts |
| | * [[Standard Model]], [[Entropy]], [[Quantum Entanglement]] |
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| ==Origin of the term==
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| The term Holism was coined by [[Jan_Smuts|J C Smuts]] in ''Holism and Evolution''.<ref name="HaE">{{ cite book | first = Jan Christiaan | last = Smuts | title = Holism and Evolution 2nd Edition |publisher = Macmillian and Co | year = 1927 }}</ref><ref>The first publication of Holism and Evolution was by MacMilian and Co. in 1926. Smuts published a 2nd edition in 1927 and there have been at least three subsequent reprints; Compass/Viking Press 1961, Greenwood Press 1973, Sierra Sunrise Books 1999 (a version edited by Sanford Holst). The full text of the 1927 2nd edition is available on the Internet Archive site and this is the source used in updating the Holism page</ref> It was Smuts' opinion that Holism is a concept that represents all of the wholes in the universe, and these wholes are the real factors in the universe. Further, that Holism also denoted a theory of the universe in the same vein as Materialism and Spiritualism.<ref name="HaE" />{{rp|120–121}}
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| The derived adjective '''holistic''' has been applied to a wide range of fields where they incorporate the concept of holism. For example, [[New Age]] is religious holism while [[New Thought]] is spiritual holism.
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| == Synopsis of ''Holism and Evolution'' ==
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| After identifying the need for reform in the fundamental concepts of matter, life and mind (chapter 1) Smuts examines the reformed concepts (as of 1926) of space and time (chapter 2), matter (chapter 3) and biology (chapter 4) and concludes that the close approach to each other of the concepts of matter, life and mind, and the partial overflow of each other's domain, implies that there is a fundamental principle (Holism) of which they are the progressive outcome.<ref name="HaE" />{{rp|86}} Chapters 5 and 6 provide the general concept, functions and categories of Holism; chapters 7 and 8 address Holism with respect to Mechanism and Darwinism, chapters 9-11 make a start towards demonstrating the concepts and functions of Holism for the metaphysical categories (mind, personality, ideals) and the book concludes with a chapter that argues for the universal ubiquity of Holism and its place as a monistic ontology.
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| The following is an overview of Smuts' opinions regarding the general concept, functions, and categories of Holism; like the definition of Holism, other than the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, the editor is unaware of any authoritative secondary sources corroborating Smuts' opinions.
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| === Structure ===
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| Wholes are composites which have an internal structure, function or character which clearly differentiates them from mechanical additions, aggregates, and constructions, such as science assumes on the mechanical hypothesis.<ref name="HaE" />{{rp|106}} The concept of structure is not confined to the physical domain (e.g. chemical, biological and artifacts); it also applies to the metaphysical domain (e.g. mental structures, properties, attributes, values, ideals, etc.)<ref name="HaE" />{{rp|161}}
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| === Field ===
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| The field of a whole is not something different and additional to it, it is the continuation of the whole beyond its sensible contours of experience.<ref name="HaE" />{{rp|113}} The field characterizes a whole as a unified and synthesised event in the system of Relativity, that includes not only its present but also its past—and also its future potentialities.<ref name="HaE" />{{rp|89}} As such, the concept of field entails both activity and structure.<ref name="HaE" />{{rp|115}}
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| === Variation ===
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| Darwin's theory of organic descent placed primary emphasis on the role of natural selection but there would be nothing to select if not for variation. Variations that are the result of mutations in the biological sense and variations that are the result of individually acquired modifications in the personal sense are attributed by Smuts to Holism; further it was his opinion that because variations appear in complexes and not singly, evolution is more than the outcome of individual selections, it is holistic.<ref name="HaE" />{{rp|190–192}}
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| === Regulation ===
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| The whole exhibits a discernible regulatory function as it relates to cooperation and coordination of the structure and activity of parts, and to the selection and deselection of variations. The result is a balanced correlation of organs and functions. The activities of the parts are directed to central ends; co-operation and unified action instead of the separate mechanical activities of the parts.<ref name="HaE" />{{rp|125}}
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| === Creativity ===
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| It is the intermingling of fields which is creative or causal in nature. This is seen in matter, where if not for its dynamic structural creative character matter could not have been the mother of the universe. This function, or factor of creativity is even more marked in biology where the protoplasm of the cell is vitally active in an ongoing process of creative change where parts are continually being destroyed and replaced by new protoplasm. With minds the regulatory function of Holism acquires consciousness and freedom, demonstrating a creative power of the most far-reaching character. Holism is not only creative but self-creative, and its final structures are far more holistic than its initial structures.<ref name="HaE" />{{rp|18, 37, 67–68, 88–89 }}
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| === Causality ===
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| As it relates to causality Smuts makes reference to Whitehead, and indirectly Spinoza; the Whitehead premise is that organic mechanism is a fundamental process which realizes and actualizes individual syntheses or unities. Holism (the factor) exemplifies this same idea while emphasizing the holistic character of the process. The whole completely transforms the concept of Causality; results are not directly a function of causes. The whole absorbs and integrates the cause into its own activity; results appear as the consequence of the activity of the whole.<ref name="HaE" />{{rp|121–124,126}} Note that this material relating to Whitehead's influence as it relates to causality was added in the second edition and, of course, will not be found in reprints of the first edition; nor is it included in the most recent Holst edition. It is the second edition of ''Holism and Evolution'' (1927) that provides the most recent and definitive treatment by Smuts.
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| === The whole is greater than the sum of its parts ===
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| <blockquote>The fundamental holistic characters as a unity of parts which is so close and intense as to be more than the sum of its parts; which not only gives a particular conformation or structure to the parts, but so relates and determines them in their synthesis that their functions are altered; the synthesis affects and determines the parts, so that they function towards the whole; and the whole and the parts, therefore reciprocally influence and determine each other, and appear more or less to merge their individual characters: the whole is in the parts and the parts are in the whole, and this synthesis of whole and parts is reflected in the holistic character of the functions of the parts as well as of the whole.<ref name="HaE" />{{rp|88}}</blockquote>
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| === Progressive grading of wholes ===
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| A "rough and provisional" summary of the progressive grading of wholes that comprise holism is as follows:<ref name="HaE" />{{rp|109}}
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| # Material structure e.g. a chemical compound
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| # Functional structure in living bodies
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| # Animals, which exhibit a degree of central control that is-primarily implicit and unconscious
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| # Personality, characterized as conscious central control
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| # States and similar group organizations characterized by central control that involves many people.
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| # Holistic Ideals, or absolute Values, distinct from human personality that are creative factors in the creation of a spiritual world, for example Truth, Beauty and Goodness.
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| == Indications of holism in philosophy ==
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| {{main|Confirmation holism|Semantic holism}}
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| In philosophy, any doctrine that emphasizes the priority of a whole over its parts is holism. Some suggest that such a definition owes its origins to a non-holistic view of language and places it in the reductivist camp. Alternately, a 'holistic' definition of holism denies the necessity of a division between the function of separate parts and the workings of the 'whole'. Effectively this means that the concept of a part has no absolute foundation in observation, but is rather a result of a materialist structuring of reality based on the necessity of logical and distinct units as a means to deriving information through comparative analysis. It suggests that the key recognizable characteristic of a concept of 'true' holism is a sense of the fundamental truth of any particular experience. This exists in contradistinction to what is perceived as the reductivist reliance on inductive method as the key to verification of its concept of how the parts function within the whole. Equally the potential for recognising the clarity of holistic experience within the logical terms of maths is limited by the abstract nature of numbers. In terms of real life measurements numbers have no scale or dimensional properties so have to rely on experimentally verified units (e.g. inches, volts, calories etc.), to describe reality. It is this reliance on the holistic integrity of experience which leads to the recognition that intuitive perception rather than mathematical calculation is the source of the truth of effective theories. (See references Holism, 2016.)
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| === Philosophy of language ===
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| In the [[philosophy of language]] this becomes the claim, called [[semantic holism]], that the meaning of an individual word or sentence can only be understood in terms of its relations to a larger body of language, even a whole theory or a whole language. In the [[philosophy of mind]], a mental state may be identified only in terms of its relations with others. This is often referred to as "content holism" or "holism of the mental". This notion involves the philosophies of such figures as [[Frege]], [[Wittgenstein]], and [[Willard Van Orman Quine|Quine]].<ref>[http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_holism.html ''Holism,'' The Basics of Philosophy]</ref>
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| === Epistemological and confirmation holism ===
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| [[epistemological holism|Epistemological]] and [[confirmation holism]] are mainstream ideas in contemporary philosophy.
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| === Ontological holism ===
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| Ontological holism was espoused by [[David Bohm]] in his theory<ref>Bohm, D. (1980). ''Wholeness and the Implicate Order''. London: Routledge. {{ISBN|0-7100-0971-2}}</ref> on the [[implicate and explicate order]].
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| === Hegel ===
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| Hegel rejected "the fundamentally atomistic conception of the object," (Stern, 38) arguing that "individual objects exist as manifestations of indivisible substance-universals, which cannot be reduced to a set of properties or attributes; he therefore holds that the object should be treated as an ontologically primary whole." (Stern, 40) In direct opposition to [[Immanuel Kant|Kant]], therefore, "Hegel insists that the unity we find in our experience of the world is not constructed by us out of a plurality of intuitions." (Stern, 40) In "his ontological scheme a concrete individual is not reducible to a plurality of sensible properties, but rather exemplifies a substance universal." (Stern, 41) His point is that it is "a mistake to treat an organic substance like blood as nothing more than a compound of unchanging chemical elements, that can be separated and united without being fundamentally altered." (Stern, 103) In Hegel's view, a substance like blood is thus "more of an organic unity and cannot be understood as just an external composition of the sort of distinct substances that were discussed at the level of chemistry." (Stern, 103) Thus in Hegel's view, blood is blood and cannot be successfully reduced to what we consider are its component parts; we must view it as a whole substance entire unto itself. This is most certainly a fundamentally holistic view.<ref>[http://www.mediafire.com/?rxmn2t1votf Robert Stern, ''Hegel, Kant and the Structure of the Object,'' London: Routledge Chapman Hall, 1990 (full text download)] {{webarchive|url=http://arquivo.pt/wayback/20160520122904/http://www.mediafire.com/?rxmn2t1votf |date=2016-05-20 }}</ref> <!-- [Editors note: work in progress, moving references to Hegel to a common section] [[Hegel]]<ref>Robert Stern, ''Hegel, Kant and the Structure of the Object'', London: Routledge, 1990, p. 6 & p. 135</ref><ref>Merold Westphal, ''Hegel, Freedom, and Modernity,'' New York: SUNY, 1992, pp.79-81, & p. 86</ref> and [[Edmund Husserl]].<ref>Michael Esfield, ''Holism in Philosophy of Mind and Philosophy of Physics'', Springer, 2001, p. 7</ref><ref>Johanna Maria Tito, ''Logic in the Husserlian Context'', Northwestern University Press, 1990, p. 245</ref> -->
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| ===Spinoza===
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| The concept of holism played a pivotal role in [[Baruch Spinoza]]'s philosophy<ref>Charles Huenemann, ''Interpreting Spinoza: Critical Essays,'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, p. 41</ref><ref>Eccy De Jonge, ''Spinoza and Deep Ecology: Challenging Traditional Approaches to Environmentalism'', UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2003, p. 65</ref>
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| == Indications of holism in physical science ==
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| {{main |Holism in science}}
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| === Agriculture ===
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| There are several newer methods in [[agricultural science]] such as [[permaculture]] and holistic planned grazing ([[holistic management]]) that integrate [[ecology]] and [[social sciences]] with food production. [[Organic farming]] is sometimes considered a holistic approach.
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| === Chaos and complexity ===
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| In the latter half of the 20th century, holism led to [[systems thinking]] and its derivatives. Systems in biology, psychology, or sociology are frequently so complex that their behavior is, or appears, "new" or "[[emergence|emergent]]": it cannot be deduced from the properties of the elements alone.{{Sfn | von Bertalanffy | 1971 | p = 54}}
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| Holism has thus been used as a catchword. This contributed to the resistance encountered by the scientific interpretation of holism, which insists that there are [[ontology|ontological]] reasons that prevent reductive models in principle from providing efficient algorithms for prediction of system behavior in certain classes of systems.{{Citation needed|date=June 2011}}
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| Scientific holism holds that the behavior of a system cannot be perfectly predicted, no matter how much data is available. Natural systems can produce surprisingly unexpected behavior, and it is suspected that behavior of such systems might be [[computational irreducibility|computationally irreducible]], which means it would not be possible to even approximate the system state without a full simulation of all the events occurring in the system. Key properties of the higher level behavior of certain classes of systems may be mediated by rare "surprises" in the behavior of their elements due to the principle of interconnectivity, thus evading predictions except by brute force simulation.
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| [[Complex systems|Complexity theory]] (also called "science of complexity") is a contemporary heir of systems thinking. It comprises both computational and holistic, relational approaches towards understanding [[complex adaptive systems]] and, especially in the latter, its methods can be seen as the polar opposite to reductive methods. General theories of complexity have been proposed, and numerous complexity institutes and departments have sprung up around the world. The [[Santa Fe Institute]] is arguably the most famous of them.
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| === Ecology ===
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| [[File:The Earth seen from Apollo 17.jpg|240px|thumb|right|The Earth seen from [[Apollo 17]].]]
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| {{See also|Holistic community}}
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| Holistic thinking is often applied to ecology, combining biological, chemical, physical, economic, ethical, and political insights. The complexity grows with the area, so that it is necessary to reduce the characteristic of the view in other ways, for example to a specific time of duration.
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| [[John Muir]], Scots born early American conservationist,<ref>Reconnecting with John Muir By Terry Gifford, University of Georgia, 2006</ref> wrote "When we try to pick out anything by itself we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe".
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| More information is to be found in the field of [[systems ecology]], a cross-disciplinary field influenced by [[general systems theory]].
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| === Medicine ===
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| In [[primary care]] the term "holistic," has been used to describe approaches that take into account social considerations and other intuitive judgements.<ref name="TudorHart2010">[[Julian Tudor Hart]] (2010) [https://books.google.com/books?id=h5_6-NeAqcsC&pg=PA258 ''The Political Economy of Health Care''] pp.106, 258</ref> The term holism, and so-called approaches, appear in [[psychosomatic illness|psychosomatic]] medicine in the 1970s, when they were considered one possible way to conceptualize psychosomatic phenomena. Instead of charting one-way causal links from [[psyche (psychology)|psyche]] to [[Soma (biology)|soma]], or vice versa, it aimed at a systemic model, where multiple biological, psychological and social factors were seen as interlinked.<ref name="Lipowski1977"/>
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| Other, alternative approaches in the 1970s were psychosomatic and somatopsychic approaches, which concentrated on causal links only from psyche to soma, or from soma to psyche, respectively.<ref name="Lipowski1977">Lipowski, 1977.{{Page needed|date=June 2011}}{{Request quotation|date=June 2011}}</ref> At present it is commonplace in psychosomatic medicine to state that psyche and soma cannot really be separated for practical or theoretical purposes.{{Citation needed|date=April 2008}} A disturbance on any level—somatic, psychic, or social—will radiate to all the other levels, too. In this sense, psychosomatic thinking is similar to the [[biopsychosocial model]] of medicine.{{Citation needed|date=June 2009}}
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| Many [[alternative medicine]] practitioners claim a [[Holistic health|holistic approach to healing]].
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| === Neurology ===
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| A lively debate has run since the end of the 19th century regarding the functional organization of the [[brain]]. The holistic tradition (e.g., [[Pierre Marie]]) maintained that the brain was a homogeneous organ with no specific subparts whereas the localizationists (e.g., [[Paul Broca]]) argued that the brain was organized in functionally distinct [[cortical area]]s which were each specialized to process a given type of information or implement specific mental operations. The controversy was [[epitome|epitomized]] with the existence of a [[language]] area in the brain, nowadays known as the [[Broca's area]].<ref>'Does Broca's area exist?': Christofredo Jakob's 1906 response to Pierre Marie's holistic stance. Kyrana Tsapkini, Ana B. Vivas, Lazaros C. Triarhou. ''Brain and Language'', Volume 105, Issue 3, June 2008, Pages 211-219 {{DOI|10.1016/j.bandl.2007.07.124}}</ref>
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| == Indications of holism in social science ==
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| === Architecture ===
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| Architecture is often argued by design academics and those practicing in design to be a holistic enterprise.<ref>Holm, Ivar (2006). ''Ideas and Beliefs in Architecture: How attitudes, orientations, and underlying assumptions shape the built environment''. Oslo School of Architecture and Design. {{ISBN|82-547-0174-1}}.</ref> Used in this context, holism tends to imply an all-inclusive design perspective. This trait is considered exclusive to architecture, distinct from other professions involved in design projects.
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| === Branding ===
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| A holistic brand (also holistic branding) is considering the entire brand or image of the company. For example, a universal brand image across all countries, including everything from advertising styles to the stationery the company has made, to the company colours.
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| === Economics ===
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| With roots in [[Schumpeter]], the evolutionary approach might be considered the holist theory in economics. They share certain language from the biological evolutionary approach. They take into account how the [[innovation system]] evolves over time. Knowledge and know-how, know-who, know-what and know-why are part of the whole business economics. Knowledge can also be tacit, as described by [[Michael Polanyi]]. These models are open, and consider that it is hard to predict exactly the impact of a policy measure. They are also less mathematical.
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| === Education reform ===
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| The [[Taxonomy of Educational Objectives]] identifies many levels of cognitive functioning, which can be used to create a more [[holistic education]]. In [[authentic assessment]], rather than using computers to score multiple choice tests, a [[standards based assessment]] uses trained scorers to score open-response items using holistic scoring methods.<ref>Rubrics (Authentic Assessment Toolbox) "So, when might you use a holistic rubric? Holistic rubrics tend to be used when a quick or gross judgment needs to be made" [http://jonathan.mueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/toolbox/rubrics.htm]</ref> In projects such as the North Carolina Writing Project, scorers are instructed not to count errors, or count numbers of points or supporting statements. The scorer is instead instructed to judge holistically whether "as a whole" is it more a "2" or a "3". Critics question whether such a process can be as objective as computer scoring, and the degree to which such scoring methods can result in different scores from different scorers.
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| ===Psychology===
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| ==== Psychology of perception ====
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| A major holist movement in the early twentieth century was [[gestalt psychology]]. The claim was that perception is not an aggregation of atomic [[sense data]] but a field, in which there is a figure and a ground. Background has holistic effects on the perceived figure. Gestalt psychologists included [[Wolfgang Koehler]], [[Max Wertheimer]], [[Kurt Koffka]]. Koehler claimed the perceptual fields corresponded to electrical fields in the brain. [[Karl Lashley]] did experiments with gold foil pieces inserted in monkey brains purporting to show that such fields did not exist. However, many of the perceptual illusions and visual phenomena exhibited by the gestaltists were taken over (often without credit) by later perceptual psychologists. Gestalt psychology had influence on [[Fritz Perls]]' [[gestalt therapy]], although some old-line gestaltists opposed the association with counter-cultural and [[New Age]] trends later associated with gestalt therapy. Gestalt theory was also influential on phenomenology. [[Aron Gurwitsch]] wrote on the role of the field of consciousness in gestalt theory in relation to phenomenology. [[Maurice Merleau-Ponty]] made much use of holistic psychologists such as work of [[Kurt Goldstein]] in his "Phenomenology of Perception."
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| ==== Teleological psychology ====
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| [[Alfred Adler]] believed that the individual (an integrated whole expressed through a self-consistent unity of thinking, feeling, and action, moving toward an unconscious, [[Classical Adlerian psychology#Fictional final goal|fictional final goal]]), must be understood within the larger wholes of society, from the groups to which he belongs (starting with his face-to-face relationships), to the larger whole of mankind. The recognition of our social embeddedness and the need for developing an interest in the welfare of others, as well as a respect for nature, is at the heart of Adler's philosophy of living and principles of psychotherapy.
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| [[Edgar Morin]], the French philosopher and sociologist, can be considered a holist based on the [[Transdisciplinarity|transdisciplinary]] nature of his work.
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| Mel Levine, M.D., author of ''A Mind at a Time'',<ref>(Simon & Schuster, 2002)</ref> and co-founder (with Charles R. Schwab) of the not-for-profit organization All Kinds of Minds, can be considered a holist based on his view of the 'whole child' as a product of many systems and his work supporting the educational needs of children through the management of a child's educational profile as a whole rather than isolated weaknesses in that profile.
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| === Sociology ===
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| ==== Anthropology ====
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| There is an ongoing dispute as to whether anthropology is intrinsically holistic. Supporters of this concept consider anthropology holistic in two senses. First, it is concerned with all human beings across times and places, and with all dimensions of humanity (evolutionary, biophysical, sociopolitical, economic, cultural, psychological, etc.) Further, many academic programs following this approach take a "four-field" approach to anthropology that encompasses [[physical anthropology]], [[archeology]], [[linguistics]], and [[cultural anthropology]] or [[social anthropology]].<ref>{{Citation | last = Shore | first = Bradd | year = 1999 | title = Strange Fate of Holism | journal = Anthropology News | volume = 40 | issue = 9 | pages = 4–5 | doi = 10.1111/an.1999.40.9.5}}.</ref>
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| Some leading anthropologists disagree, and consider anthropological holism to be an artifact from 19th century [[sociocultural evolution|social evolutionary]] thought that inappropriately imposes scientific [[positivism]] upon cultural anthropology.<ref name=Sacred_bundle>{{Citation | editor1-last =Segal | editor1-first = Daniel A | first2 = Ian | editor2-last = Yanagisako | first1 = James | last1 = Clifford | last2 = Hodder | first3 = Rena | last3 = Lederman | first4 = Michael | last4 = Silverstein |title=Unwrapping the Sacred Bundle: Reflections on the Disciplining of Anthropology |publisher=Duke University Press |year= 2005 |url=http://www.dukeupress.edu/cgibin/forwardsql/search.cgi?template0=nomatch.htm&template2=books/book_detail_page.htm&user_id=11016434335&Bmain.Btitle_option=1&Bmain.Btitle=Unwrapping+the+Sacred+Bundle}}</ref>
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| The term "holism" is additionally used within social and cultural anthropology to refer to an analysis of a society as a whole which refuses to break society into component parts. One definition says: "as a methodological ideal, holism implies ... that one does not permit oneself to believe that our own established institutional boundaries (e.g. between politics, sexuality, religion, economics) necessarily may be found also in foreign societies."<ref>[http://www.anthrobase.com/Dic/eng/def/holism.htm anthrobase definition of holism]</ref>
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| ==== Émile Durkheim ====
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| {{main|Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft}} {{see also|Ubuntu (philosophy)}}
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| [[Émile Durkheim]] developed a concept of holism which he set as opposite to the notion that a [[society]] was nothing more than a simple collection of individuals. In more recent times, [[Louis Dumont (anthropologist)|Louis Dumont]]<ref>[[Louis Dumont (anthropologist)|Louis Dumont]], 1984</ref> has contrasted "holism" to "[[individualism]]" as two different forms of societies. According to him, modern humans live in an individualist society, whereas ancient Greek society, for example, could be qualified as "holistic", because the individual found identity in the whole society. Thus, the individual was ready to sacrifice himself or herself for his or her [[community]], as his or her life without the ''[[polis]]'' had no sense whatsoever.
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| ==== Cosmomorphism ====
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| The French Protestant missionary [[Maurice Leenhardt]] coined the term "cosmomorphism" to indicate the state of perfect [[symbiosis]] with the surrounding environment which characterized the culture of the [[Melanesians]] of [[New Caledonia]]. For these people, an isolated individual is totally indeterminate, indistinct, and featureless until he can find his position within the natural and social world in which he is inserted. The confines between the self and the world are annulled to the point that the material body itself is no guarantee of the sort of recognition of identity which is typical of our own culture.<ref>Anne Bihan, [http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/ile.en.ile/paroles/bihan_writer.html "The Writer, a Man Without Qualities"], ''Literature and Identity in New Caledonia''.</ref><ref>Susan Rasmussen, [http://ijds.lemoyne.edu/journal/3_1/pdf/IJDS.3.1.03.Rasmussen.pdf "Personahood, Self, Difference, and Dialogue (Commentary on Chaudhary)"], ''International Journal for Dialogical Science'', Fall 2008, Vol. 3, No. 1, 31-54.</ref>
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| === Theology ===
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| Holistic concepts are strongly represented within the thoughts expressed within [[Logos]] (per [[Heraclitus]]), [[Panentheism]] and [[Pantheism]].{{Citation needed|date=November 2015}}
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| In [[theological anthropology]], which belongs to theology and not to anthropology, holism is the belief that [[Human body|body]], [[Soul (spirit)|soul]] and [[spirit]] are not separate components of a person, but rather facets of a united whole.<ref>"The traditional anthropology encounters major problems in the Bible and its predominantly holistic view of human beings. Genesis 2:7 is a key verse: 'Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being' (NRSV). The 'living being' (traditionally, 'living soul') is an attempt to translate the Hebrew ''nephesh hayah,'' which indicates a 'living person' in the context. More than one interpreter has pointed out that this text does not say that the human being ''has'' a soul but rather ''is'' a soul. H. Wheeler Robinson summarized the matter in his statement that 'The Hebrew conceived man as animated body and not as an incarnate soul.'" (Martin E. Tate, "The Comprehensive Nature of Salvation in Biblical Perspective," ''Evangelical review of theology,'' Vol. 23.)</ref>
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| == See also ==
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| {{Div col|colwidth=20em}}
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| *[[Antireductionism]]
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| *[[Antiscience]]
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| *[[Atomism]]
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| *[[Emergentism]]
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| *{{section link|G. E. Moore|Organic wholes}}
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| *[[Gaia hypothesis]]
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| *[[Holarchy]]
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| *[[Holism in ecological anthropology]]
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| *[[Holon (philosophy)]]
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| *[[Interdisciplinarity]]
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| *[[Organicism]]
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| *[[Organismic theory]]
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| *[[Panarchy]]
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| *[[Polytely]]
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| *[[Synergetics (Fuller)]]
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| *[[Synergy]]
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| *[[Systems theory]]
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| *[[The Blind Man and the Lame|The Story of 'the Blind Man and the Lame']]
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| *'''Writers:'''
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| **[[Christopher Alexander]]
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| **[[Buckminster Fuller]]
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| **[[Arthur Koestler]]
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| **[[Howard T. Odum]]
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| **[[Allan Savory]]
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| **[[Eric Scerri]]
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| **[[Herbert A. Simon]]
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| **[[Victor Skumin]]
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| **[[Ken Wilber]]
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| {{Div col end}}
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| ==Notes==
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| {{reflist |colwidth=30em}}
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| ==References==
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| * {{Citation | author-link = Ludwig von Bertalanffy | first = Ludwig | last = von Bertalanffy | year = 1971 | title = General System Theory. Foundations Development Applications | publisher = Allen Lane | origyear = 1968}}.
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| * [[Bohm, D.]] (1980) ''Wholeness and the Implicate Order''. London: [[Routledge]]. {{ISBN|0-7100-0971-2}}
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| * Leenhardt, M. 1947 ''Do Kamo. La personne et le mythe dans le monde mélanésien''. Gallimard. Paris.
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| * {{cite journal | last1 = Lipowski | first1 = Z.J. | year = | title = Psychosomatic medicine in seventies | url = | journal = Am. J. Psychiatry | volume = 134 | issue = 3| pages = 233–244 }}
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| * [[Jan C. Smuts]], 1926 ''Holism and Evolution'' MacMillan, Compass/Viking Press 1961 reprint: {{ISBN|0-598-63750-8}}, Greenwood Press 1973 reprint: {{ISBN|0-8371-6556-3}}, Sierra Sunrise 1999 (mildly edited): {{ISBN|1-887263-14-4}}
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| * Bob Young.Holism, 2016. www.holism2018.wordpress.com
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| == Further reading ==
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| * [[Vincent Descombes|Descombes, Vincent]], ''The Institutions of Meaning: A Defense of Anthropological Holism''. Cambridge, MA: [[Harvard University Press]]. 2014.
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| * Dusek, Val, ''The Holistic Inspirations of Physics: An Underground History of Electromagnetic Theory'' Rutgers University Press, Brunswick NJ, 1999.
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| * Fodor, Jerry, and Ernst Lepore, ''Holism: A Shopper's Guide'' Wiley. New York. 1992
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| * Hayek, F.A. von. ''[[The Counter-Revolution of Science]]. Studies on the abuse of reason.'' Free Press. New York. 1957.
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| * Mandelbaum, M. ''Societal Facts'' in Gardner 1959.
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| * Phillips, D.C. ''Holistic Thought in Social Science''. Stanford University Press. Stanford. 1976.
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| * {{cite journal | last1 = Dreyfus | first1 = H.L. | year = | title = Holism and Hermeneutics | url = | journal = The Review of Metaphysics | volume = 34 | issue = | pages = 3–23 }}
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| * James, S. ''The Content of Social Explanation''. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, 1984.
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| * Harrington, A. ''Reenchanted Science: Holism in German Culture from Wilhelm II to Hitler''. Princeton University Press. 1996.
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| * Lopez, F. ''Il pensiero olistico di Ippocrate'', vol. I-IIA, Ed. Pubblisfera, Cosenza Italy 2004-2008.
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| * Robert Stern, ''Hegel, Kant and the Structure of the Object,'' London: Routledge Chapman Hall, 1990
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| * Sen, R. K., ''Aesthetic Enjoyment: Its Background in Philosophy and Medicine'', Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1966
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| == External links ==
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| {{Wiktionary}}
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| {{wikiquote}}
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| ** Brief explanation of Koestler's [https://web.archive.org/web/20050719000606/http://www.mech.kuleuven.be/pma/project/goa/hms-int/history.html derivation of "holon"]
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| * Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article: [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physics-holism/ "Holism and Nonseparability in Physics"]
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| * James Schombert of [[University of Oregon]] Physics Dept on [http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/glossary/holism.html quantum holism]
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| * Theory of [http://www.twow.net/ObjText/OtkCcCE.htm sociological holism] from "World of Wholeness"
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| [[Category:Holism| ]]
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| [[Category:Philosophical theories]]
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| [[Category:Natural philosophy]]
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| [[Category:Philosophy of science]]
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| [[Category:Political philosophy]]
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| [[Category:Social theories]]
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| [[Category:Communalism]]
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| [[Category:New Thought terminology]]
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| [[Category:Emergence]]
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| [[Category:Philosophy]] | | [[Category:Philosophy]] |
| [[Category:Philosophy of Science]] | | [[Category:Philosophy of Science]] |
| [[Category:Structure]] | | [[Category:Structure]] |
| | [[Category:Cosmology]] |
Holism (from the Greek holos, "all, whole, entire") is the position that a system and its properties must be understood as a whole, and cannot be fully accounted for by decomposing it into parts and treating the parts separately. Its opposite is reductionism.
The term was coined by Jan Christiaan Smuts in Holism and Evolution (1926), who held that wholes are the real factors in the universe and that the tendency to form wholes is a fundamental principle in nature. The word has since been applied very widely — in philosophy of language, where the meaning of a sentence is held to depend on a whole language; in the philosophy of science, where Duhem and Quine argued that a hypothesis is never tested in isolation but only as part of a whole body of theory; and in systems theory, ecology and medicine.
In physics the mainstream position is not straightforwardly reductionist either. Emergent and collective phenomena — superconductivity, phase transitions, spontaneous symmetry breaking — are standard cases in which a system has properties that its constituents do not, and quantum mechanics describes entangled systems by a single state that cannot be factorised into states of the parts.
Holism in natural philosophy
On this wiki holism carries a stronger and more specific meaning than "the whole is more than the sum of its parts". A large part of the material catalogued here holds that the properties of a local object — its inertia, its mass, even its identity as a particle — are constituted by its relations to the rest of the universe, and cannot be assigned to it in isolation. That is a physical claim rather than a methodological preference, and it is one of the points on which the researchers documented here part company with the Standard Model.
Several distinct strands of that claim run through this wiki.
Mach's principle
The oldest and most concrete is Mach's principle. Ernst Mach argued that the inertia of a body is not intrinsic but is determined by its relation to all the other matter in the universe — that Newton's rotating bucket reveals rotation relative to the fixed stars, not relative to absolute space. If that is right, no local measurement of inertia is the measurement of a local property: the mass in F = ma is a fact about the whole cosmos. This is holism stated as a physical hypothesis, it makes a quantitative demand, and it remains a live thread here with its own category.
Bohm's implicate order
The most fully developed treatment is David Bohm's. In Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980) Bohm argued that the apparent separateness of objects belongs to an "explicate" order unfolded from a deeper implicate order in which everything is enfolded in everything else — the hologram being his standing analogy, since each region of a hologram carries information about the whole image. Bohm regarded the fragmentation of the world into independent parts as a habit of thought imposed on the phenomena rather than read from them, and took quantum non-locality as evidence that the habit fails.
Absorber theory and the wave structure of matter
A third strand puts the whole-universe dependence into the equations. Wheeler and Feynman's absorber theory (1945) treats radiation from an accelerated charge as involving a response from all the absorbing matter in the universe, so that the radiative behaviour of one electron implicates every other. Milo M Wolff builds directly on this: in "Einstein's Last Question: What is an Electron?" the in-wave of each electron is composed of the out-waves of all other particles, giving the formula that every charged particle is part of the universe and the universe is part of every charged particle. Peter Kohut's "universal connection" principle, in "The Bipolar Structure of Particles and Interactions", reaches a similar position from a different starting point.
Plasma cosmology and the large scale
Anthony L Peratt and Eric J Lerner argue for holism of a different kind: that structures at galactic and intergalactic scale are shaped by currents and fields spanning enormous distances, so that a galaxy cannot be modelled as an isolated gravitating island. Here the objection is that the boundary conditions ordinarily imposed — treating a system as isolated — are the very thing in dispute.
Thermodynamic and cosmological objections
Glenn Borchardt and others in the infinite-universe tradition object to applying to the universe as a whole conclusions derived for closed subsystems, the heat-death argument being the standard case. Whether entropy reasoning transfers from a box of gas to the cosmos is precisely a dispute about whether the whole may be treated as a very large part.
Where the argument is weakest
Holism is easier to assert than to cash, and three cautions apply to material on this wiki as much as anywhere.
First, "everything is connected" is not by itself a theory. To do physical work a holistic claim must say what the connection is, how strong it is, and how it falls off with distance. Mach's principle is interesting precisely because it makes that demand; looser formulations do not, and cannot be tested.
Second, holism does not license instantaneous action. Quantum entanglement is genuinely non-local in the sense Bell's theorem makes precise, but the no-communication theorem forbids using it to send a signal, and a Bell violation does not establish a causal channel between distant systems. Arguments that slide from entanglement to instantaneous influence claim more than the result they cite supports. See Quantum Entanglement.
Third, the interesting question is not whether wholes have properties their parts lack, which no one disputes, but whether particular properties — inertia above all — are relational in Mach's stronger sense. That is an empirical question, and it is the one worth pressing.
On this wiki