May 13, 2010

Holism

Opposite of reductionism

  • The whole phenomenon, rather than study of isolated parts
  • Holistic interpretation proceeds from the whole
  • Assertion: "the whole is more than the sum of its parts" e.g. a working motor vs. its stacked parts
  • Hostility to analysis
  • Holistic interpretations have no single, independent causes
[in Chandler]

No comments:

Creative Commons License
Digital Telephone Book by Elizabeth Chairopoulou is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.