Holism (from other Greek ὅλος “whole, whole”) in the broad sense is a position in philosophy and science on the problem of the correlation of part and whole, proceeding from the qualitative originality and priority of the whole with respect to its parts [1] .
In a narrow sense , holism is understood as the “philosophy of integrity” developed by the South African philosopher and political figure J. Smats , who introduced the term “holism” in philosophical speech in 1926 , based on the words from Aristotle 's Metaphysics “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts ".
Content
Principle
The ontological principle of holism states: the whole is always more than the simple sum of its parts. From a holistic perspective, the whole world is a single whole, and the individual phenomena and objects that we single out make sense only as part of a community. In this regard, many holistic thinkers of religious and transcendental orientation concluded that the development of the world should be guided by some force external to it, although, for example, such a pronounced immanentist as G. Hegel was also a consistent holist.
In epistemology, holism is based on the principle: the knowledge of the whole must precede the knowledge of its parts.
Holism in the History of Philosophy
Holism dominated European philosophical thought from antiquity until the 17th century. An example of a holistic statement from the works of Hippocrates : "man is a universal and united part of the world," or "microcosm in macrocosm." The representative of classical German idealism G.V. F. Hegel said: "only the whole makes sense."
However, with the development of science in the 17th and 19th centuries and the spread of mechanistic and reductionist ideas in philosophy and natural science, the view of any system as a derivative of parts prevailed, and the conviction grew that the properties of any object can be derived from an analysis of its constituent elements. Accordingly, the holistic principle began to be perceived as a philosophical concept without practical value and was pushed to the periphery of public consciousness.
Interest in the ideas of holism increased again in the 20th century in connection with the crisis of the classical picture of the world and the heyday of hermeneutics . Actually, at that time the term appeared - in the "philosophy of integrity" by J. Smats .
The holistic principle in modern philosophy
Holism is inherent in many philosophical concepts of development, including those influenced by the ideas of A. Bergson and A.N. Whitehead . They distinguish ontological holism (affirms the supremacy of wholeness in front of individual elements) and methodological holism (explains individual phenomena in their relation to wholeness). In a broad sense, holism is an attitude toward all aspects of the phenomenon under consideration and a critical attitude to any one-sided approach. Holism is widely popular in a wide variety of teachings. His supporters were A. Loman, A. Meyer-Abih, J. Haldane , he became the basis of gestalt psychology , phenomenology of E. Husserl , a number of areas of social philosophy ( K. Marx , E. Durkheim , N. Luman ) and modern philosophy of science ( thesis Duhem-Quine , the Kuhn-Feyerabend thesis) [2] .
Holism is currently being developed in the general theory of systems . From the holistic ideas comes the often used concept of synergy . The practical embodiment of the idea of holism is the concept of emergence that arose in synergetics , that is, the emergence in the system of a new systemic quality that cannot be reduced to the sum of the qualities of the elements of the system. He openly relies on the holistic principle of C. Wilber in his philosophical concept of integral psychology .
See also
- Emergence
- General theory of systems
- Synergetics
- Epistemology
- Integral psychology
- Principle of complementarity
Notes
- ↑ Nikiforov A. L. Holism // New Philosophical Encyclopedia / Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences ; Nat social science fund; Pres scientific ed. Council V. S. Styopin , alternate representatives: A. A. Huseynov , G. Yu. Semigin , school. sec. A.P. Ogurtsov . - 2nd ed., Rev. and extra. - M .: Thought , 2010 .-- ISBN 978-5-244-01115-9 .
- ↑ Kasavin I.T. Holism // Encyclopedia of Epistemology and Philosophy of Science / Compilation and general edition. I.T. Kasavin . - Moscow: "Canon +" ROOI "Rehabilitation", 2009. - S. 1109. - 1248 p. - 800 copies. - ISBN 978-5-88373-089-3 .
Literature
- Morozov E.V. Holism. Spiritual Revival 2012. Saarbrücken, 2010. ISBN 978-3-8433-0393-4
- Magazine " Holism and Health " - Reg. number: PI FS 77-38506