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Holism is the interdisciplinary idea that systems possess properties as wholes apart from the properties of their component parts. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] 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. [ 4 ]
Historical particularism (coined by Marvin Harris in 1968) [1] is widely considered the first American anthropological school of thought.. Closely associated with Franz Boas and the Boasian approach to anthropology, historical particularism rejected the cultural evolutionary model that had dominated anthropology until Boas.
Richard Middleton (1990, p. 9-10) argues that "such theories always end up in some kind of reductionism – 'upwards', into an idealist cultural spirit, 'downwards', into economism, sociologism or technologism, or by 'circumnavigation', in a functionalist holism." However, he "would like to hang on to the notion of homology in a qualified sense.
In Philosophy, logical holism is the belief that the world operates in such a way that no part can be known without the whole being known first. Theoretical holism is a theory in philosophy of science , that a theory of science can only be understood in its entirety, introduced by Pierre Duhem .
Holism 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.
A sociological theory is a supposition that intends to consider, analyze, and/or explain objects of social reality from a sociological perspective, [1]: 14 drawing connections between individual concepts in order to organize and substantiate sociological knowledge.
The critics of total holism do not deny that evidence may spread its support far and wide. Rather, they deny that it always spreads its support to the whole of any theory or theoretical framework that entails or probabilistically predicts the evidence. This view is known as partial holism.
Holism in science, holistic science, or methodological holism is an approach to research that emphasizes the study of complex systems.Systems are approached as coherent wholes whose component parts are best understood in context and in relation to both each other and to the whole.