Holon (philosophy)

For other uses, see Holon (disambiguation).

A holon is something that is simultaneously a whole in and of itself, as well as a part of a larger whole. In this way, a holon can be considered a subsystem within a larger hierarchical system. An individual holon is also made up of constituent parts. In this way holons can be seen as having three aspects: (1) the whole self-contained thing itself,(2) it is made up of parts, and (3) it is also a part of something larger. A bias of only seeing what parts a thing is made up of in order to understand its nature is at the heart of reductionism. A bias of seeing only what a thing is a part of is gaiaism. A holon can be seen as an object within a recursive field, a whole, made of parts, and part of something larger.

The holon represents a way to overcome the dichotomy between parts and wholes, as well as a way to account for both the self-assertive and the integrative tendencies of organisms.

Holons are sometimes discussed in the context of self-organizing holarchic open (SOHO) systems.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.