::: holissstik will be given a deadly injection quite soon
::: to be 'replaced' with kkoagulaa
- Considering a whole thing or being to be more than a collection of parts
- Relating to or concerned with wholes or with complete systems rather than with the analysis of, treatment of, or dissection into parts.
- Looking at the whole system rather than just concentrating on individual components. The overall sum can be greater than a simple totaling of the individual parts, because the "system" adds something in addition. Another term is "systems thinking".
- The phenomenon conceptualized as an indivisible whole, whose essential nature is distorted or destroyed if reduced to a collection of parts.
- no dimension of culture can be understood in isolation, cultures are integrated wholes.
- Holism (from holos, a Greek word meaning all, entire, total) is the idea that all the properties of a given system (biological, chemical, social, economic, mental, linguistic, etc.) cannot be determined or explained by the sum of its component parts alone. Instead, the system as a whole determines in an important way how the parts behave.
- The general principle of holism was concisely summarized by Aristotle in the Metaphysics: "The whole is more than the sum of its parts."
- Reductionism is sometimes seen as the opposite of holism. Reductionism in science says that a complex system can be explained by reduction to its fundamental parts. Essentially, chemistry is reducible to physics, biology is reducible to chemistry and physics, psychology and sociology are reducible to biology, etc. Some other proponents of reductionism, however, think that holism is the opposite only of greedy reductionism.
- On the other hand, holism and reductionism can also be regarded as complementary viewpoints, in which case they both would be needed to get a proper account of a given system.
