Authors:
  • There is a strong current in contemporary culture advocating ' holistic ' views as some sort of cure-all... Reductionism implies attention to a lower level while holistic implies attention to higher level. These are intertwined in any satisfactory description: and each entails some loss relative to our cognitive preferences, as well as some gain... there is no whole system without an interconnection of its parts and there is no whole system without an environment.

    "From autopoiesis to neurophenomenology: Francisco Varela's exploration of the biophysics of being" by D. Rudrauf, Biol Res 36: 27-65, 2003.