Holism typically stands in contrast with reductionism, which describes systems by dividing them into smaller components in order to understand them through their elemental properties.
[1] 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.
The phenomenon of emergence may impose a theoretical limit on knowledge available through reductionist methodology, arguably making complex systems natural subjects for holistic approaches.
[citation needed] 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.
[10][11] Paul Davies and John Gribbin further observe that Wheeler's delayed choice experiment shows how the quantum world displays a sort of holism in time as well as space.
[12] In the holistic approach of David Bohm, any collection of quantum objects constitutes an indivisible whole within an implicate and explicate order.
[16] Holistic thinking can be applied to ecology, combining biological, chemical, physical, economic, ethical, and political insights.
Instead of charting one-way causal links from psyche to soma, or vice versa, it aimed at a systemic model, where multiple biological, psychological and social factors were seen as interlinked.
[24] 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.
The recognition of our social embeddedness and the need for developing an interest in the welfare of others, as well as a respect for nature, is at the heart of Adler's philosophy of living and principles of psychotherapy.
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.
"[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.