THE NATURE OF THE TERM HOLISM: THE WHOLE IS MORE THAN THE SUM OF THE PARTS

The word holistic appears more and more frequently in our conversations. We talk about holistic medicine, holistic approaches to life, holistic visions of the human being. It has become a familiar, almost trendy term. Yet, if we stop to reflect for a moment, we discover that behind that word lies something much deeper: an idea capable of overturning the way we’ve thought about the world for centuries.

The concept of holism was born in the early twentieth century. It was introduced by the South African philosopher and politician Jan Smuts , author of the 1926 essay Holism and Evolution. He coined the term holos , from the Greek “whole,” to describe a principle that at the time sounded almost heretical: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts . With this idea, Smuts challenged the science of his time, still a prisoner of reductionism—that tendency to break everything down into its fundamental elements in order to understand it.

For centuries, classical physics followed this logic: separate, analyze, measure. A method that gave us much, but which at a certain point revealed its limits. When, with quantum physics , the curtain was lifted on the subatomic world, these certainties were shattered. Particles did not behave as autonomous objects, but as elements in constant communication with each other. Each event was linked to another, as if there were an invisible thread uniting everything.

Niels Bohr , one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, explained it clearly : “When we observe a part of the world, we cannot forget that we are also observing ourselves as we observe it.”

This sentence contains the revolution: there is no longer an external observer and an observed world, but a relationship that encompasses both.
Reality is not a collection of isolated objects: it is a living network of relationships that influence each other. Electrons do not “travel” alone through space, but move like dancers reacting to the gestures of others. It is as if the universe had a memory of itself, a breath that permeates every fragment.

And so matter, viewed with new eyes, ceases to be a mosaic of parts and becomes a set of connections. It is no different from music: it is not the single note that generates harmony, but the space between the notes, that silent rhythm that shapes the sound and transforms it into emotion. The symphony lives precisely there, where sounds meet and create something that none of them, alone, could produce.

Likewise, the universe is not a machine that adds its parts, but an organism that continually renews itself. Everything—from atoms to planets, from the human body to galaxies—participates in a larger order, in which every element communicates with the others. Everything is connected, and connection itself is what generates life.

Studying the parts is necessary, but it’s not enough. To truly understand reality, we need to change perspective, learning to see the threads that hold the whole together. There, in that subtle web where science meets philosophy , knowledge ceases to be mere theory and becomes living experience : the awareness of being part of a whole that contains us and flows through us.

–
–
–