“Holism [is] the art — in contrast with reductionism — of seeing a complex system as a whole. Holism knows the limits to its understanding; it acknowledges that the system has its wildness, its privacy, its own reasons, its defences against invasive explanation … It does not pretend to understand the whole school just on the evidence of dissecting the geography teacher.”

—  David Fleming

Lean Logic, (2016), p. 194, entry on Holism http://www.flemingpolicycentre.org.uk/lean-logic-surviving-the-future/

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David Fleming25
British activist 1940–2010

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“A system is more than the sum of its parts; it is an indivisible whole.”

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“A system is more than the sum of its parts; it is an indivisible whole. It loses its essential properties when it is taken apart. The elements of a system may themselves be systems, and every system may be part of a larger system.”

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