Title: Holistic Approach | Encyclopedia.com
Headings: Holistic Approach
Holistic Approach
Holistic approach
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Content: The United States Forest Service , for example, has implemented a multi-level approach to management that takes into account the complexity of forest ecosystems, rather than the traditional focus on isolated incidents or problems. Some people believe that a holistic approach to nature and the world will counter the effects of "reductionism" — excessive individualism, atomization, mechanistic worldview, objectivism, materialism, and anthropocentrism. Advocates of holism claim that its emphasis on connectivity, community, processes, networks, participation, synthesis, systems, and emergent properties will undo the "ills" of reductionism. Others warn that a balance between reductionism and holism is necessary. American ecologist Eugene Odum mandated that "ecology must combine holism with reductionism if applications are to benefit society." Parts and wholes, at the macro- and micro-level, must be understood. The basic lesson of a combined and complementary parts-whole approach is that every entity is both part and whole — an idea reenforced by Arthur Koestler 's concept of a holon. A holon is any entity that is both a part of a larger system and itself a system made up of parts. It is essential to recognize that holism can include the study of any whole, the entirety of any individual in all its ramifications, without implying any organic analogy other than organisms themselves. A holistic approach alone, especially in its extreme form, is unrealistic, condemning scholars to an unproductive wallowing in an unmanageable complexity.