Holism facts for kids

The Earth seen from Apollo 17.

Holism is a way of thinking that looks at things as a whole, instead of just their separate parts. It suggests that a system's properties and how it works can't be fully understood by only studying its individual pieces. Instead, you need to see how all the parts work together.

For example, imagine a bicycle. If you only look at the wheels, the pedals, or the handlebars by themselves, you won't understand how the bicycle moves. But when you see all these parts connected and working together, you understand the bicycle as a whole. Holism applies this idea to many areas, like living things, societies, and even how our minds work.

What is Holism?

Holism is the idea that a "whole" is more than just the sum of its "parts." This means that when different parts come together to form a system, new properties or behaviors can appear that weren't present in the individual parts.

Holism vs. Reductionism

Holism is often seen as the opposite of Reductionism. Reductionism is a scientific approach that tries to understand a complex system by breaking it down into its smallest, most basic parts. For instance, a reductionist might say that everything in biology can be explained by chemistry, and everything in chemistry can be explained by physics.

While breaking things down can be very helpful for understanding, holism argues that it's not always enough. Sometimes, you need to put the pieces back together to truly understand how something works.

Understanding Complex Systems

Physician and social scientist Nicholas A. Christakis explains this idea well. He says that for a long time, science has focused on breaking things into smaller and smaller bits to understand them. This method works for some things. However, putting those bits back together to understand the whole system is often much harder. It usually comes later in the development of a scientist or a scientific field.

For example, studying individual cells in a body is important. But to understand how a human body functions, you also need to see how all the cells, organs, and systems work together as one complete organism.

Related ideas

• Gestalt psychology: This is a school of thought that says our brains naturally try to see things as complete wholes rather than just collections of parts.
• Theory of everything: This is a theoretical framework in physics that tries to explain all physical phenomena in the universe in one complete theory.

Images for kids

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  A robot, showing how parts come together to form a whole.