Holism in science
Holism in science, holistic science, or methodological holism is an approach to
The holism-individualism dichotomy is especially evident in conflicting interpretations of experimental findings across the social sciences, and reflects whether behavioural analysis begins at the systemic, macro-level (ie. derived from social relations) or the component micro-level (ie. derived from individual agents).[2]
Overview
David Deutsch calls holism anti-reductionist and refers to the concept of thinking as the only legitimate way to think about science in as a series of emergent, or higher level phenomena. He argues that neither approach is purely correct.[3]
Two aspects of Holism are:
- The way of doing science, sometimes called "whole to parts", which focuses on observation of the specimen within its ecosystem first before breaking down to study any part of the specimen.[4]
- The idea that the scientist is not a passive observer of an external universe but rather a participant in the system.[5]
Proponents claim that Holistic science is naturally suited to subjects such as ecology, biology, physics and the social sciences, where complex, non-linear interactions are the norm. These are systems where emergent properties arise at the level of the whole that cannot be predicted by focusing on the parts alone, which may make mainstream, reductionist science ill-equipped to provide understanding beyond a certain level. This principle of emergence in complex systems is often captured in the phrase ′the whole is greater than the sum of its parts′. Living organisms are an example: no knowledge of all the chemical and physical properties of matter can explain or predict the functioning of living organisms. The same happens in complex social human systems, where detailed understanding of individual behaviour cannot predict the behaviour of the group, which emerges at the level of the collective. The phenomenon of emergence may impose a theoretical limit on knowledge available through reductionist methodology, arguably making complex systems natural subjects for holistic approaches.[6]
Science journalist
One of the reasons that holistic science attracts supporters is that it seems to offer a progressive, 'socio-ecological' view of the world, but Alan Marshall's book The Unity of Nature offers evidence to the contrary; suggesting holism in science is not 'ecological' or 'socially-responsive' at all, but regressive and repressive.[1]
Examples in various fields of science
Physical science
Agriculture
In physics
Richard Healey offered a modal interpretation and used it to present a model account of the puzzling correlations which portrays them as resulting from the operation of a process that violates both spatial and spatiotemporal separability. He argued that, on this interpretation, the nonseparability of the process is a consequence of physical property holism; and that the resulting account yields genuine understanding of how the correlations come about without any violation of relativity theory or Local Action.
In the
Chaos and complexity
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 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.[16]
Ecology
Holistic thinking can be 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.[17]
Medicine
In
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. 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]
The term systems medicine first appeared in 1992 and takes an integrative approach to all of the body and environment.[19][20]
Social science
Economics
Some economists use a causal holism theory in their work. That is they view the discipline in the manner of Ludwig Wittgenstein and claim that it can't be defined by necessary and sufficient conditions.[21]
Education reform
The
Anthropology
Anthropology is 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
Some anthropologists disagree, and consider holism to be an artifact from 19th century social evolutionary thought that inappropriately imposes scientific positivism upon cultural anthropology.[25]
The term "holism" is additionally used within social and cultural anthropology to refer to a methodological analysis of a society as a whole, in which component parts are treated as functionally relative to each other. 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."[26]
Psychology of perception
A major holist movement in the early twentieth century was
Teleological psychology
Edgar Morin, the French philosopher and sociologist, can be considered a holist based on the transdisciplinary nature of his work.
Skeptical reception
According to skeptics, the phrase "holistic science" is often misused by pseudosciences. In the book Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology it's noted that "Proponents of pseudoscientific claims, especially in organic medicine, and mental health, often resort to the "mantra of holism" to explain away negative findings. When invoking the mantra, they typically maintain that scientific claims can be evaluated only within the context of broader claims and therefore cannot be evaluated in isolation."[27] This is an invocation of Karl Popper's demarcation problem and in a posting to Ask a Philosopher Massimo Pigliucci clarifies Popper by positing, "Instead of thinking of science as making progress by inductive generalization (which doesn’t work because no matter how many times a given theory may have been confirmed thus far, it is always possible that new, contrary, data will emerge tomorrow), we should say that science makes progress by conclusively disconfirming theories that are, in fact, wrong."[28]
Victor J. Stenger states that "holistic healing is associated with the rejection of classical, Newtonian physics. Yet, holistic healing retains many ideas from eighteenth and nineteenth century physics. Its proponents are blissfully unaware that these ideas, especially superluminal holism, have been rejected by modern physics as well".[29]
Some quantum mystics interpret the wave function of quantum mechanics as a vibration in a holistic ether that pervades the universe and wave function collapse as the result of some cosmic consciousness. This is a misinterpretation of the effects of quantum entanglement as a violation of relativistic causality and quantum field theory.[30]
See also
- Antireductionism
- Emergence
- Holarchy
- Holism
- Holism in ecological anthropology
- Holistic management
- Holistic health
- Holon (philosophy)
- Interdisciplinarity
- Organicism
- Scientific reductionism
- Systems thinking
References
- ^ ISBN 978-1-78326-116-1.
- ^ Zahle, J. Methodological Holism and the Social Sciences Archived 2022-05-02 at the Wayback Machine
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- S2CID 18372542.
- ISBN 978-90-481-8748-5.
- ISBN 978-1-60358-149-3.
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- ^ Coughlin, Chrissy (2013-03-11). "Allan Savory: How livestock can protect the land". GreenBiz. Archived from the original on 2013-04-11. Retrieved 5 April 2013.
- ISBN 978-0-521-40874-5.
- ISBN 978-94-011-5084-2.
- S2CID 67757302.
- ISBN 978-0-7432-9091-3.
- ^ Richard Healey: Holism and Nonseparability in Physics (Spring 2009 Edition) Archived 2013-12-02 at the Wayback Machine, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), first published July 22, 1999; substantive revision December 10, 2008, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Section: "Ontological Holism in Quantum Mechanics?" (retrieved June 3, 2011)
- ISBN 978-1-134-80713-0.
- ISBN 978-1-134-43872-3.
- PMID 20226033.
- ISBN 978-94-015-9560-5.
- Julian Tudor Hart (2010) The Political Economy of Health Carepp.106, 258
- PMID 19724047.
- PMID 19724047.
- from the original on 29 June 2018. Retrieved 29 June 2018.
- ^ Rubrics (Authentic Assessment Toolbox).[1] Archived 2011-01-28 at the Wayback Machine
- (PDF) from the original on 9 August 2017. Retrieved 29 June 2018.
- ISSN 1541-6151.
- ISBN 978-0-8223-8684-1.
- ^ "Definition of Anthropological Holism". anthrobase.com. Archived from the original on 15 July 2017. Retrieved 29 June 2018.
- ISBN 978-1-4625-1751-0.
- ^ Pigliucci, Massimo (2014-06-09). "Demarcating science from pseudoscience". askaphilosopher.wordpress.com. Archived from the original on 2018-06-27. Retrieved 27 June 2018.
- ISBN 978-1-61592-158-4.
- ^ Park, Robert L. (October 1997). "Alternative Medicine and the Laws of Physics". Skeptical Inquirer. 21 (5). Archived from the original on 6 June 2018. Retrieved 28 June 2018.
Further reading
- Article "Patterns of Wholeness: Introducing Holistic Science" by Brian Goodwin, from the journal Resurgence
- Article "From Control to Participation" by Brian Goodwin, from the journal Resurgence
- Freire, Olival (2005). "Science and exile: David Bohm, the cold war, and a new interpretation of quantum mechanics". Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences. 36: 1–34. .