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Holism is the interdisciplinary idea that possess properties as wholes apart from the properties of their component parts..Julian Tudor Hart (2010) The Political Economy of Health Care pp.106, 258 The aphorism "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts", typically attributed to Aristotle, is often given as a summary of this proposal. The concept of holism can inform the methodology for a broad array of scientific fields and lifestyle practices. When applications of holism are said to reveal properties of a whole system beyond those of its parts, these qualities are referred to as Emergence of that system. Holism in all contexts is often placed in opposition to reductionism, a dominant notion in the philosophy of science that systems containing parts contain no unique properties beyond those parts. Proponents of holism consider the search for emergent properties within systems to be demonstrative of their perspective.
Professional philosophers of science and linguistics did not consider Holism and Evolution seriously upon its initial publication in 1926 and the work has received criticism for a lack of theoretical coherence. Some biological scientists, however, did offer favorable assessments shortly after its first print. Over time, the meaning of the word holism became most closely associated with Smuts' first conception of the term, yet without any metaphysical commitments to monism, Property dualism, or similar concepts which can be inferred from his work.
In scientific disciplines, reductionism is the opposing viewpoint to holism. But in the context of linguistics or the philosophy of language, reductionism is typically referred to as atomism. Specifically, atomism states that each word's meaning is independent and so there are no emergent properties within a language. Additionally, there is meaning molecularism which states that a change in one word alters the meaning of only a relatively small set of other words.
The linguistic perspective of meaning holism is traced back to an essay by WV QuineQuine, W.V., 1951, “Two dogmas of empiricism”, reprinted in W.V. Quine, 1953, From a logical point of view, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, pp. 20–46 but was subsequently formalized by analytic philosophers Michael Dummett, Jerry Fodor, and Ernest Lepore.Fodor, J. & E. Lepore 1992, Holism: A Shoppers Guide, Cambridge: Blackwell.
While this holistic approach attempts to resolve a classical problem for the philosophy of language concerning how words convey meaning, there is debate over its validity mostly from two angles of criticism: opposition to compositionality and, especially, instability of meaning. The first claims that meaning holism conflicts with the compositionality of language. Meaning in some languages is compositional in that meaning comes from the structure of an expression's parts.Fodor, J. & E. Lepore 2002, The Compositionality Papers, New York: Oxford University Press. Meaning holism suggests that the meaning of words plays an inferential role in the meaning of other words: "pet fish" might imply a meaning of "less than 3 ounces." Since holistic views of meaning assume meaning depends on which words are used and how those words confer meaning onto other words, rather than how they are structured, meaning holism stands in conflict with compositionalism and leaves statements with potentially ambiguous meanings.Pagin, P., 1997, “Is Compositionality Compatible with Holism?” Mind & Language, 12(1): 11–33. The second criticism claims that meaning holism makes meaning in language unstable. If some words must be used to infer the meaning of other words, then in order to communicate a message, the sender and the receiver must share an identical set of inferential assumptions or beliefs. If these beliefs were different, meaning may be lost.Jackman, Henry, "Meaning Holism"
Many types of communication would be directly affected by the principles of meaning holism such as informative communication,Jackman, Henry, "Meaning Holism"
Scientific applications
Physics
Nonseparability
The advent of holism in the 20th century coincided with the gradual development of quantum mechanics.
Holism in physics is the nonseparability of physical systems from their parts, especially quantum phenomena. Classical physics cannot be regarded as holistic, as the behavior of individual parts represents the whole. However, the state of a system in quantum theory resists a certain kind of reductive analysis. For example, two spatially separated quantum systems are described as "entangled," or nonseparable from each other, when a meaningful analysis of one system is indistinguishable from that of the other. There are different conceptions of nonseparability in physics and its exploration is considered to broadly present insight into the Ontology problem.
Variants
In one sense, holism for physics is a perspective about the best way to understand the nature of a physical system. In this sense, holism is the methodological claim that systems are accurately understood according to their properties as a whole. A methodological reductionist in physics might seek to explain, for example, the behavior of a liquid by examining its component molecules, atoms, ions or electrons. A methodological holist, on the other hand, believes there is something misguided about this approach; one proponent, a condensed matter physicist, puts it: “the most important advances in this area come about by the emergence of qualitatively new concepts at the intermediate or macroscopic levels—concepts which, one hopes, will be compatible with one's information about the microscopic constituents, but which are in no sense logically dependent on it.”Leggett, A. J., 1987, p.113, The Problems of Physics, New York: Oxford University Press. This perspective is considered a conventional attitude among contemporary physicists.
In another sense, holism is a metaphysical claim that the nature of a system is not determined by the properties of its component parts. There are three varieties of this sense of physical holism.
The metaphysical claim does not assert that physical systems involve abstract properties beyond the composition of its physical parts, but that there are concrete properties aside from those of its basic physical parts. Theoretical physicist David Bohm (1917-1992) supports this view head-on. Bohm believed that a complete description of the universe would have to go beyond a simple list of all its particles and their positions, there would also have to be a physical quantum field associated with the properties of those particles Determinism their trajectories.Bohm, D., 1980, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Bohm, D. and Hiley, B.J., 1993, The Undivided Universe, New York: Routledge. Bohm's ontological holism concerning the nature of whole physical systems was literal. But Niels Bohr (1885-1962), on the other hand, held ontological holism from an epistemological angle, rather than a literal one.Faye, Jan, "Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics" , The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
. Bohr saw an observational apparatus to be a part of a system under observation, besides the basic physical parts themselves. His theory agrees with Bohm that whole systems were not merely composed of their parts and it identifies properties such as position and momentum as those of whole systems beyond those of its components.Bohr, N., 1934, Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. But Bohr states that these holistic properties are only meaningful in experimental contexts when physical systems are under observation and that these systems, when not under observation, cannot be said to have meaningful properties, even if these properties took place outside our observation. While Bohr claims these holistic properties exist only insofar as they can be observed, Bohm took his ontological holism one step further by claiming these properties must exist regardless.
Linguistics
Semantic holism suggests that the meaning of individual words depends on the meaning of other words, forming a large web of interconnections. In general, meaning holism states that the properties which determine the meaning of a word are connected such that if the meaning of one word changes, the meaning of every other word in the web changes as well.Jackman, Henry, "Meaning Holism"
Hempel, C.G., 1950, “Problems and changes in the empiricist criterion of meaning”, Revue internationale de Philosophie, 41(11): 41–63. The set of words that alter in meaning due to a change in the meaning of some other is not necessarily specified in meaning holism, but typically such a change is taken straightforwardly to affect the meaning of every word in the language.Block, N., 1986, “Advertisement for a Semantics for Psychology”, Midwest Studies in Philosophy (Studies in the Philosophy of Mind), 10: 615–678.Field, H., 1977, “Logic, Meaning and Conceptual Role”, The Journal of Philosophy, LXXIV(7): 379–409.Harman, G., 1993, “Meaning Holism Defended”, in Fodor and Lepore 1993, pp. 163–171.Sellars, W., 1974, “Meaning as Functional Classification”, Synthese, 27: 417–37.
language learning,Dummett, M., 1976, “What is a Theory of Meaning? (II)”, reprinted in M. Dummett, The Seas of Language, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996, 44Dresner, E., 2002, “Holism, Language Acquisition and Algebraic Logic”, Linguistics and Philosophy, 25(4): 419–52.Jönsson, M., 2014, “Semantic Holism and Language Learning”, Journal of Philosophical Logic, 43: 725–59. and communication about psychological states.Fodor, J., 1987, Psychosemantics: The Problem of Meaning in the Philosophy of Mind, Cambridge: MIT Press.Fodor, J. & E. Lepore, 1992, Holism: A Shoppers Guide, Cambridge: Blackwell. Nevertheless, some meaning holists maintain that the instability of meaning holism is an acceptable feature from several different angles. In one example, contextual holists make this point simply by suggesting we often do not actually share identical inferential assumptions but instead rely on context to counter differences of inference and support communication.Bilgrami, A. 1992, Belief and Meaning, Oxford: Blackwell.
Biology
Scientific applications of holism within biology are referred to as systems biology. The opposing analytical approach of systems biology is biological organization which models biological systems and structures only in terms of their component parts. "The reductionist approach has successfully identified most of the components and many of the interactions but, unfortunately, offers no convincing concepts or methods to understand how system properties emerge...the pluralism of causes and effects in biological networks is better addressed by observing, through quantitative measures, multiple components simultaneously and by rigorous data integration with mathematical models."Sauer, Uwe; Heinemann, Matthias; Zamboni, Nicola (27 April 2007). "Genetics: Getting Closer to the Whole Picture". Science. 316 (5824): 550–551. doi:10.1126/science.1142502. PMID 17463274. S2CID 42448991.
The objective in systems biology is to advance models of the interactions in a system. Holistic approaches to modelling have involved cellular modelling strategies,Snoep, Jacky L; Westerhoff, Hans V (2005). "From isolation to integration, a systems biology approach for building the Silicon Cell". In Alberghina, Lilia; Westerhoff, Hans V (eds.). Systems Biology: Definitions and Perspectives. Topics in Current Genetics. Vol. 13. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. pp. 13–30. doi:10.1007/b106456. ISBN 978-3-540-22968-1. genomic interaction analysis,Chiara Romualdi; Gerolamo Lanfranchi (2009). "Statistical Tools for Gene Expression Analysis and Systems Biology and Related Web Resources". In Stephen Krawetz (ed.). Bioinformatics for Systems Biology (2nd ed.). Humana Press. pp. 181–205. doi:10.1007/978-1-59745-440-7_11. ISBN 978-1-59745-440-7. and phenotype prediction.Karr, Jonathan R.; Sanghvi, Jayodita C.; Macklin, Derek N.; Gutschow, Miriam V.; Jacobs, Jared M.; Bolival, Benjamin; Assad-Garcia, Nacyra; Glass, John I.; Covert, Markus W. (July 2012). "A Whole-Cell Computational Model Predicts Phenotype from Genotype". Cell. 150 (2): 389–401. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2012.05.044. PMC 3413483. PMID 22817898.
Systems medicine
Systems medicine is a practical approach to systems biology and accepts its holistic assumptions. Systems medicine takes the systems of the human body as made up of a complete whole and uses this as a starting point in its research and, ultimately, treatment.
Lifestyle applications
The term holism Susanne Steines : Ambihemispherical Holosophy's 12 Translucidly Mindful Words, Dec 10, 2021. is also sometimes used in the context of various lifestyle practices, such as dieting, education, and healthcare, to refer to ways of life that either supplement or replace conventional practices. In these contexts, holism is not necessarily a rigorous or well-defined methodology for obtaining a particular lifestyle outcome. It is sometimes simply an adjective to describe practices which account for factors that standard forms of these practices may discount, especially in the context of alternative medicine.
See also
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