Philosophy: What is Holism?

Holism is the theory that the universe and living nature is correctly seen in terms of interacting wholes that are more than just the sum of simple particles. It is more concerned with the whole of things or with the complete systems. It is the idea that all the properties of a given system whether it is biological, chemical, social, economical, mental, linguistics, metaphysical, and so on cannot be explained by simply the sum of its parts alone. Instead, what is needed is that we view the system as a whole to determine how the parts behave.

Aristotle famously quoted that “The whole is more than the sum of its parts”. Aristotle viewed the world and each being within it to be mutually interrelated, or connected together and part of a teleologically organized whole. It differs from reductionism because in reductionism, we would claim that the whole can be explained by reducing the whole to its parts.
Philosophically speaking, holism has the idea that the whole is much more than the sum of its parts, so to reduce the whole to these parts alone will eliminate some factors which are present only when we see things as a whole. Such holistic perspectives are found in religious and cultural traditions. For example, some might see the world as a teleologically organized whole as God’s creation. The Chinese yin-yang philosophy views the world as an organic whole too and in healthcare, for example, we could focus on the health of the entire body and mind and not just parts of the body. Holistic doctors, and yes, that is a thing, they would not just provide patients with medications.

The term holism as an academic term was introduced by the South African statesman Jan Smuts in his 1926 book called, Holism and evolution. Smuts explained holism as the tendency in nature to form wholes that are greater than the sum of the parts through creative evolution.

In philosophy, we have something called logical holism and this is the belief that the world operates in certain ways that makes every part unknown without the whole being known first. So to understand the parts, we must understand the whole of something. For example, practical holism is a concept used in the work of Martin Heidegger and it states that it is not possible to have a complete understanding of one’s own experience of reality because our mode of existence is ingrained in cultural practices and the limits set by the tasks that we are doing. The philosopher Hegel also had a holistic view. He states that nature consists of one timeless, unified, rational and spiritual reality.

Here is a short story of six blind men that are asked to describe an elephant. They feel each part of the elephant and then are asked to tell the audience what it feels like. One blind man feels a leg and says that it is like a tree, the next one touches the tail and says that it is like a rope, another touches the body and says that it is like a wall, another feels the ears and say that is fan-like, another feels the tusk and says it is like a spear, the last one feels the trunk and says it feels like a snake. None of them have the complete picture yet they are partly right about it. If they touched the whole thing then maybe they would have known that it was an elephant.
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