Title: Define holistic | Dictionary and Thesaurus
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Define holistic

AskDefine | Define holistic
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Content: also many academic programs following this approach take a "four-field" approach to anthropology that encompasses physical anthropology, archeology, linguistics, and cultural anthropology or social anthropology. The definition of anthropology as holistic and the "four-field" approach are disputed by leading anthropologist, that consider those as artifacts from 19th century social evolutionary thought that inappropriately impose scientific positivism upon cultural anthropology. has contrasted "holism" to " individualism " as two different forms of societies. According to him, modern humans live in an individualist society, whereas ancient Greek society, for example, could be qualified as "holistic", because the individual found identity in the whole society. Thus, the individual was ready to sacrifice himself or herself for his or her community, as his or her life without the polis had no sense whatsoever. In teleological psychology
Alfred Adler believed that the individual (an integrated whole expressed through a self-consistent unity of thinking, feeling, and action, moving toward an unconscious, fictional final goal ), must be understood within the larger wholes of society, from the groups to which he belongs (starting with his face-to-face relationships), to the larger whole of mankind. The recognition of our social embeddedness and the need for developing an interest in the welfare of others, as well as a respect for nature, is at the heart of Adler's philosophy of living and principles of psychotherapy. Edgar Morin , the French philosopher and sociobiologist, can be considered a holist based on the transdisciplinary nature of his work. Mel Levine, M.D., author of A Mind at a Time, and Co-Founder (with Charles R. Schwab) of the not-for-profit organization All Kinds of Minds , can be considered a holist based on his view of the 'whole child' as a product of many systems and his work supporting the educational needs of children through the management of a child's educational profile as a whole rather than isolated weaknesses in that profile. In theological anthropology
In theological anthropology, which belongs to theology and not to anthropology, holism is the belief that the nature of humans consists of an indivisible union of components such as body, soul and spirit.