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Non-reductionist Science
Holism in science, holistic science, or methodological holism is an approach to research that emphasizes the study of complex systems. Systems are approached as coherent wholes whose component parts are best understood in context and in relation to both each other and to the whole. Holism typically stands in contrast with reductionism, which describes systems by dividing them into smaller components in order to understand them through their elemental properties. The holism- individualism dichotomy is especially evident in conflicting interpretations of experimental findings across the social sciences, and reflects whether behavioural analysis begins at the systemic, macro-level (ie. derived from social relations) or the component micro-level (ie. derived from individual agents). Overview David Deutsch calls holism anti-reductionist and refers to the concept of thinking as the only legitimate way to think about science in as a series of emergent, or higher level phenomena. He ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Holism
Holism () is the idea that various systems (e.g. physical, biological, social) should be viewed as wholes, not merely as a collection of parts. The term "holism" was coined by Jan Smuts in his 1926 book ''Holism and Evolution''."holism, n." OED Online, Oxford University Press, September 2019, www.oed.com/view/Entry/87726. Accessed 23 October 2019. While his ideas had racist connotations, the modern use of the word generally refers to treating a person as an integrated whole, rather than as a collection of separate systems. For example, well-being may be regarded as not merely physical health, but also psychological and spiritual well-being. Meaning The exact meaning of "holism" depends on context. Jan Smuts originally used "holism" to refer to the tendency in nature to produce wholes from the ordered grouping of unit structures. However, in common usage, "holism" usually refers to the idea that a whole is greater than the sum of its parts.J. C. Poynton (1987) SMUTS'S HOLISM AND EVOL ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Gribbin
John R. Gribbin (born 19 March 1946) is a British science writer, an astrophysicist, and a visiting fellow in astronomy at the University of Sussex. His writings include quantum physics, human evolution, climate change, global warming, the origins of the universe, and biographies of famous scientists. He also writes science fiction. Biography John Gribbin graduated with his bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Sussex in 1966. Gribbin then earned his Master of Science (MSc) degree in astronomy in 1967, also from the Univ. of Sussex, and he earned his PhD in astrophysics from the University of Cambridge (1971). In 1968, Gribbin worked as one of Fred Hoyle's research students at the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy, and wrote a number of stories for ''New Scientist'' about the Institute's research and what were eventually discovered to be pulsars. In 1974, Gribbin, along with Stephen Plagemann, published a book titled ''The Jupiter Effect'', which predicted ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is considered by some to be the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. From 1929 to 1947, Wittgenstein taught at the University of Cambridge. In spite of his position, during his entire life only one book of his philosophy was published, the 75-page ''Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung'' (''Logical-Philosophical Treatise'', 1921), which appeared, together with an English translation, in 1922 under the Latin title ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus''. His only other published works were an article, "Some Remarks on Logical Form" (1929); a book review; and a children's dictionary. His voluminous manuscripts were edited and published posthumously. The first and best-known of this posthumous series is the 1953 book ''Philosophical Investigations''. A su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Systems Medicine
Systems medicine is an interdisciplinary field of study that looks at the systems of the human body as part of an integrated whole, incorporating biochemical, physiological, and environment interactions. Systems medicine draws on systems science and systems biology, and considers complex interactions within the human body in light of a patient's genomics, behavior and environment. The earliest uses of the term ''systems medicine'' appeared in 1992, in an article on systems medicine and pharmacology by T. Kamada. An important topic in systems medicine and systems biomedicine is the development of computational models that describe disease progression and the effect of therapeutic interventions. More recent approaches include the redefinition of disease phenotypes based on common mechanisms rather than symptoms. These provide then therapeutic targets including network pharmacology and drug repurposing. Since 2018, there is a dedicated scientific journal, ''Systems Medicine''. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soma (biology)
The soma (pl. ''somata'' or ''somas''), perikaryon (pl. ''perikarya''), neurocyton, or cell body is the bulbous, non-process portion of a neuron or other brain cell type, containing the cell nucleus. The word 'soma' comes from the Greek '' σῶμα'', meaning 'body'. Although it is often used to refer to neurons, it can also refer to other cell types as well, including astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, and microglia. There are many different specialized types of neurons, and their sizes vary from as small as about 5 micrometres to over 10 millimetres for some of the smallest and largest neurons of invertebrates, respectively. The soma of a neuron (i.e., the main part of the neuron in which the dendrites branch off of) contains many organelles, including granules called Nissl granules, which are composed largely of rough endoplasmic reticulum and free polyribosomes. The cell nucleus is a key feature of the soma. The nucleus is the source of most of the RNA that is produced in neuro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Psyche (psychology)
In psychology, the psyche is the totality of the human mind, conscious and unconscious. Many thinkers, including Carl Jung, also include in this definition the overlap and tension between the personal and the collective elements in man. Psychology is the scientific or objective study of the psyche. The word has a long history of use in psychology and philosophy, dating back to ancient times, and represents one of the fundamental concepts for understanding human nature from a scientific point of view. The English word soul is sometimes used synonymously, especially in older texts. Etymology The basic meaning of the Greek word ψυχή (''psyche'') was "life", although unsupported, some have claimed it is derived from the verb ψύχω (''psycho'', "to blow"). Derived meanings included "spirit", "soul", "ghost", and ultimately "self" in the sense of "conscious personality" or "psyche". Ancient psychology The idea of the psyche is central to the philosophy of Plato. Scholars tra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Psychosomatic Illness
A somatic symptom disorder, formerly known as a somatoform disorder,(2013) dsm5.org. Retrieved April 8, 2014. is any mental disorder that manifests as physical symptoms that suggest illness or injury, but cannot be explained fully by a general medical condition or by the direct effect of a substance, and are not attributable to another mental disorder (e.g., panic disorder). Somatic symptom disorders, as a group, are included in a number of diagnostic schemes of mental illness, including the ''Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders''. (Before DSM-5 this disorder was split into ''somatization disorder'' and ''undifferentiated somatoform disorder''.) In people who have been diagnosed with a somatic symptom disorder, medical test results are either normal or do not explain the person's symptoms (medically unexplained physical symptoms), and history and physical examination do not indicate the presence of a known medical condition that could cause them, though the DSM ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Julian Tudor Hart
Alan Julian Macbeth Tudor-Hart (9 March 1927 – 1 July 2018), commonly known as Julian Tudor Hart, was a British doctor who worked as a general practitioner (GP) in Wales for 30 years. He was involved with research and wrote many books and scientific articles. Early life Hart was born in London on 9 March 1927, the son of Alexander Tudor-Hart and Alison Macbeth. He studied medicine at Cambridge University and in London, graduating in 1952. He is a descendant of American businessman Frederic Tudor and Ephraim Hart, a Bavarian Jew who became a prominent merchant in New York, and was reportedly partners with John Jacob Astor. The name was originally Hirz. His paternal grandfather, the Canadian artist Percyval Hart, married his Polish-French cousin Éléonora Délia Julie Aimée Hart Kleczkowska, and later changed the family surname to Tudor-Hart. Kleczkowska was the daughter of diplomat Michel Alexandre Cholewa, comte Kleczkowski (Michał Kleczkowski; 1818–1886) and grand ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Primary Care
Primary care is the day-to-day healthcare given by a health care provider. Typically this provider acts as the first contact and principal point of continuing care for patients within a healthcare system, and coordinates other specialist care that the patient may need. Patients commonly receive primary care from professionals such as a primary care physician ( general practitioner or family physician), a physician assistant, or a nurse practitioner. In some localities, such a professional may be a registered nurse, a pharmacist, a clinical officer (as in parts of Africa), or an Ayurvedic or other traditional medicine professional (as in parts of Asia). Depending on the nature of the health condition, patients may then be referred for secondary or tertiary care. Background The World Health Organization attributes the provision of essential primary care as an integral component of an inclusive primary healthcare strategy. Primary care involves the widest scope of healthcare ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computational Irreducibility
Computational irreducibility is one of the main ideas proposed by Stephen Wolfram in his 2002 book ''A New Kind of Science'', although the concept goes back tstudies from the 1980s The idea Many physical systems are complex enough that they cannot be effectively measured. Even simpler programs contain a great diversity of behavior. Therefore no model can predict using only initial conditions, exactly what will occur in a given physical system before an experiment is conducted. Because of this problem of undecidability in the formal language of computation, Wolfram terms this inability to "shortcut" a system (or "program"), or otherwise describe its behavior in a simple way, "computational irreducibility." The idea demonstrates that there are occurrences where theory's predictions are effectively not possible. Wolfram states several phenomena are normally computationally irreducible. Computational irreducibility explains observed limitations of existing mainstream science. In ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Implicate And Explicate Order According To David Bohm
Implicate order and explicate order are ontological concepts for quantum theory coined by theoretical physicist David Bohm during the early 1980s. They are used to describe two different frameworks for understanding the same phenomenon or aspect of reality. In particular, the concepts were developed in order to explain the bizarre behaviors of subatomic particles which quantum physics describes and predicts with elegant precision but struggles to explain. In Bohm's '' Wholeness and the Implicate Order'', he used these notions to describe how the appearance of such phenomena might appear differently, or might be characterized by, varying principal factors, depending on contexts such as scales.David Bohm: ''Wholeness and the Implicate Order'', Routledge, 1980 (). The implicate (also referred to as the "enfolded") order is seen as a deeper and more fundamental order of reality. In contrast, the explicate or "unfolded" order includes the abstractions that humans normally perceive. As h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
