holistic

Knowledge

2022

We explain what is holistic and some examples of this perspective. Also, what are holistic vision and holistic education.

thought that raises the approach to systems of any kind: social, physical, biological, mental, etc., and their respective properties, from a total perspective, as a whole, and not purely through the elements that constitute them. It is, in short, a view from set of things, you prefer to consider the system as a everything integrated and global.

From a holistic perspective, any considered system is more complex than the mere sum of its parts, since the synergy between them produces the appreciable effect of the system, and not the individual properties of each one. In this way, holism is totally contrary to the reductionist vision, according to which everything that exists can be analyzed from the examination of its constituent elements.

In simpler terms, holism proposes that certain properties of things cannot be found in their constituent elements, but emerge only when they form a whole. This is how the Greek philosopher Aristotle defined it in his Metaphysics: "The whole is more than the sum of its parts."

This term is applied to various fields of knowledge, such as medicine or education, to propose an approach to the subject that considers the problems as an integral whole.

Examples of the holistic

Holistic neurology considers the brain an operational whole.

Some possible examples of this philosophy are:

  • The holo-medicine. Or holistic medicine, whose basic approach is not to seek the cure of ailments in a single affected point, as if they were spare parts, but in the entire functioning of the body, thus aiming at a bodily harmony and the reestablishment of a certain balance.
  • Holistic Neurology. Is a perception of the human brain that considers it an operational whole, an interrelation, and considers it a mistake to approach each region of the organ based on its specific functions.
  • The holistic interpretation. A historical event can be approached from a specific, contextual interpretation, or rather as a process framed in a historical whole of interrelated processes that make up a global dynamic.

Holistic view

You can have a holistic view of anything. Strictly speaking, a holistic vision would be one that first contemplates the entire system or the trouble, than its component parts. This vision can provide a more complete understanding of the whole and certainly prevents us from losing sight of it by concentrating on its elements. For example, a holistic practitioner will prefer to think of his patient's illness as a general condition of the body, rather than as a focal organ problem.

In the latter, however, there is the problem of holism, since it fails to legitimize its positions vis-à-vis the scientific methodBecause by keeping the full perspective, details and specifications related to your interior items are lost.

Holistic education

Similarly, holistic education or learning holistic comprehensive is a doctrine or philosophy educational whose approach is that people understand their place in the world, their identity and relationship with themselves, or their personal meaning, by connecting with the community, with the rest. To do this, it emphasizes concepts such as compassion, peace and the affective connection, in search of devotion for learning together with love for life.

This paradigm should not be confused with religious education of any kind. It is not about a spiritual or moral educational model, so much as a world view as a complex web of connections.

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