Holism and Reductionism

Holism

In the different field of the social, science, and technology, different processes, behavior, operations, concepts, and theories get to evolve and mold globally. All these activities should get examined and understood for the better drawing of the conclusions and explanations behind the concepts. Holism gets to provide the base for checking, examining, testing the activities for the better understanding by handling the activities the way they are in whole without the separation of the activities into the constituents. Therefore, holism is a system mechanism of getting to understand complex activities for the draw of conclusions by applying the principle of together as one. The principle takes to consider the relationship amongst the applications to have them handled as one.

According to the philosophers, holism gets to originate from Greek word holos which mean all or the total. Thus, the principle behind the holistic approach of handling the complex phenomenon as whole without the consideration of the sum parts of the complex system. The holism indeed is diametric against the atomism. The atomism defines the existence of objects from small components. The concept backs the concept of fragmentation, segmentation and separation that are opposite of the holism suggestions. As a result, the concepts gets employ the mechanism of togetherness with the consideration of not breaking the existing relationships amongst the complex system parts.

According to the philosophical point of view of holism, the holistic approach gets defined into the epistemological holism and semantic holism. The definitions depend on the epistemology and the doctrines of the philosophy of the language. The epistemological holism also known as confirmation holism explains the need of having a given single scientific theory tested in the isolation. The isolation of the theory defines the theory dependence on other scientific theories and hypothesis, thus having the scientific theory, complex phenomenon analyzed as whole without the separation of the phenomenon. Semantic holism, on the other hand, takes a focus in the understanding of the doctrines of the philosophy of the language. The explanation behind the semantic holism states that a given language gets understood on the establishment of considering the language relationship to the ancient language from which the language to get understood borrows the concept (Chapman & Routledge, 2009). Thus, the semantic holism explicitly gives out the explanation behind the holistic approach of consideration of the relationship between the given concepts.

Holism takes to apply the gestalt approach that takes into the consideration of the greatness of handling a given theory as whole than basing on the sum of the theory/ concept parts. The approach provides the broad application of handling complex issues as whole than applying the concepts of separation and fragmentation. The approach gets the holistic approach to depicting further out the assumption behind the understanding of the phenomenon for the draw of conclusions. The assumption goes to explaining that the phenomenon parts of the complex system are dependent on the each other. The parts dependence gets to have the complex system parts relationship get put into the consideration (Mastin, 2008). The application of the holistic approach will consider and respect the links between the complex systems and, as a result, the risk management with the employment of the holistic approach is better and high. The approach gets to apply to all situational complexities of systems and theories for their explanation and understanding.

Reductionism

Reductionism is the total opposite of the holistic approach to understanding the concept. The reductionist approach of system thinking gets to employ the principle of having the complex concept broken into the components for the examination, checking, and understanding of the concept parts separately. Later the parts of the complex system get incorporated to have the phenomenon back after the understanding after which the overall conclusions get drawn from the separate, individual understanding of the complex system parts. Therefore, reductionism is a system thinking approach to understanding the behaviors of the phenomenon by breaking the phenomenon into the components and handling the constituents individually and separately.

According to philosophy, reductionism explains the consideration of the complex system as nothing because the system complexity comes from the total of the individual parts of the phenomenon. The reductionist approach does take in the further concept of atomism apart from the fragmentation concept. The atomism states the existence of components for the small matters of atoms. The atoms get formed by the nucleus and the proton that gets to combine to form the molecule that further concatenates to form the components that generate the different existing objects (Jones, 2000). Therefore, there is the will of splitting the given issue or system into parts for the easy understanding through the testing, checking, and examining. However, there exist some matters whose understanding should get done in the consideration of the whole system. The explanation of the human emotions is difficult with the separation of the human parts, hence the system gets limited to some aspects.

The reductionist approach does get to operate on the assumption of parsimony. The assumption does suggest that the better analyzing, testing, and understanding of any given object will have get broken and simplified into parts for individualization. Basing on the parsimony, the kind of approach gets to state the assumption behind the ignoring of the relationships of the complex phenomenon components (Wolkenhauer & Green, 2013). The reductionism assumes the parts of the complex system are independent and that there is no any relationship amongst the parts. The assumption gets to limit the approach to some cases especially the objects parts depends on each other. The assumption of the complex system parts being independent boosts the process of checking, examining, testing, analyzing and understanding the concept of isolation. After the actions, the parts get incorporated to have the draw of the overall system understanding. Therefore, the reductionist approach tends to apply the concept of separation in the handling of the concept during their analysis, understanding, and withdrawal of conclusion after understanding. Furthermore, the approach has the dependence on the fact that the complex system parts are independent.

The approach is great in the understanding of the complex system with the introduction and enhancement of the innovations and inventions. The concept gets broken down, and the understanding of the technology behind each module of the complex system gets to provide a better mind of drawing conclusions and recommendations. The technology field will tend to apply the reductionist approach. Indeed, it is a scientific lens applied by the scientists in the achievement of the improvements in the technology growth. The understanding of a single part of the system will get the analytics provide further works concerning the concept. It is because of the better understanding of the behavior of the complex system that stands the higher chances of providing the further recommendations.

Compare and Contrast of Holism and Reductionism

The Holism and Reductionism approaches of the system thinking get employed on the implementation of the same concept of examining, testing, checking, and explaining a given concept for the draw of conclusion after an advanced understanding of the phenomenon. The application of either of the concept will have the analyzing and understanding of the available concept for the withdrawal of conclusions necessary for decision making. However, each approach gets to implement the process of analyzing, checking, examining and understanding the complex system differently. The Holism will have the understanding of the concept done by the consideration of the concept as a whole. The approach values the greatness of handling the phenomenon as a single set than the sum of the application phenomenon parts. The reduction approach does break and simplify the complex phenomenon into parts.

The reductionist approach has the breaking of the phenomenon of constituents where the process of analyzing, examining, testing and the understanding of the concept is easy and efficient especially in the cases where the behaviorism of the phenomenon does not the needed response. The holism process of handling the phenomenon has whole had the concerned parties’ rough time to accomplishing the task because of the inefficiency of the approach. The holism approach takes into the consideration of the risks that attains the phenomenon with the controlling of the process of getting to understand the concept. The reductionist approach of separating the concept gets the pose the phenomenon to the risks in the cases of handling the parts separately and during the incorporation (Hill & Hill, 2001).

Reductionist applies the parsimony assumption of simplifying objects while Holism, on the other hand, applies the gestalt approach of focusing on the greatness of handling the concept as a whole.

References

Chapman, S., & Routledge, C. (2009). Key ideas in linguistics and the philosophy of language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Hill, G., & Hill, G. (2001). A Level psychology through diagrams. Oxford: Oxford University press

Jones, R. H. (2000). Reductionism: Analysis and the fullness of reality. Lewisburg: Bucknell Univ. Press.

Mastin, L. (2008). The Basics of Philosophy.

Wolkenhauer, O., & Green, S. (2013): The search for organizing principles as a cure against reductionism in systems medicine. FEBS Journal, 280(23), 5938-5948.

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at Melda Research in professional writing services if you need a similar paper you can place your order for a custom research paper from writing services online.