Holism

HarryCH

From Wikipedia:

'Holism is the interdisciplinary idea that systems possess properties as wholes apart from the properties of their component parts. The aphorism "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts", typically attributed to Aristotle, is often given as a glib summary of this proposal.'

What do you think of this? Is this a good concept? If you find it of use, what would be some examples?

Gramps49

Gestalt Psychology uses this motto.

Also, a simple engine is a great example. I can lay out all the pieces of a machine and weight them on a scale. The total on the scale does not make a machine. Placing the parts together the right way creates a machine where the whole is greater than its parts.

pablito1954

@HarryCH An example of something that is bigger than the sum of its parts is the country I live in, the United Kingdon of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. As a post industrial and post imperial country, which continues to slide down the world's league table of economically successful countries, we still punch above our weight internationally. We hold a permanent place on the UN Security Council, and we retain our place in the G7 economies of the world. All this will change within a decade as many other countries power through.

Yet this UK is a not very united kingdom. Strong voices in Scotland want to break this more than 300 year union, which they are perfectly entitled to do, if they vote for it. Northern Ireland could vote to unite with the Irish Republic, which would make sense in so many ways. What Wales would do is anyone's guess. There is no love lost between the Welsh and the English, but we've been a legal single entity for 700 years. With a tiny population of 2 million, I think a majority of Welsh people would swallow hard and accept the status quo. Yet there is a growing sense, in Wales, to throw off the English yoke.

So should this nation fragment, it's international status would nose dive with it. Although 85% of the UK population live in England, as an identity apart from the UK, England could command no grand international status. Sorry this turned our so long winded, but I see the UK as a perfect example of something bigger than the sum of its parts.

Arethosemyfeet

I think the UK is more an example of how international institutions lag far behind reality (see also Republic of China). The UK's UN security council seat would be inherited by any successor state, unless there is a change of rules at the UN to say otherwise, and none of the permanent 5 want to touch that because they would have to answer why, 80 years after WW2, they continue to be able to wield veto power over actions to enforce international law. Most of the world already think the permanent seats are an anachronism, and doubly so for France and the UK.

The EU is a better example, where harmonisation and speaking with a single voice in trade and competition issues has made it a powerful actor globally. When the EU tells Apple it needs to switch to USB C it has to listen, in a way it never would to the member states individually.

Lamb Chopped

And grateful i am for it, too!

ChastMastr

HarryCH wrote: »

From Wikipedia:

'Holism is the interdisciplinary idea that systems possess properties as wholes apart from the properties of their component parts. The aphorism "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts", typically attributed to Aristotle, is often given as a glib summary of this proposal.'

What do you think of this? Is this a good concept? If you find it of use, what would be some examples?

Whether or not it is useful, I certainly believe that is true. One example among… everything else in creation, really… would be humans. If you take us apart completely, you get a whole bunch of atoms (or even more elementary particles/energy/math, etc.) and a soul/spirit (and quite possibly other things, but at least these). Yet being human is more than that, just as one example. (It is perhaps obvious from this that I am not an existentialist—I believe things, in this world God has made, have an intrinsic essence/nature/meaning, so in that sense of the word, I’m an essentialist, or even close to a form (no pun intended) of Platonist.)

“It’s all in Plato, all in Plato…”

Schroedingers Cat

Useful for what? I think it is true, and it gives a proper perspective to reality.

A company is more than just a set of processes or even a group of people - the interactions between the people are also important. Which is one reason that c-suite-imposed cutbacks are so often far more damaging that they would appear.

HarryCH

I think an example is the idea of institutional evil: even if all the people involved in an organization are people of good will, the organization itself may behave badly.