Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84 (Fortune 01.1b1); site graffiti.UUCP
Path: utzoo!decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!think!harvard!seismo!ut-sally!ut-ngp!shell!graffiti!peter
From: peter@graffiti.UUCP (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: net.med
Subject: Holism vs. what?
Message-ID: <233@graffiti.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 24-Sep-85 07:23:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: graffiti.233
Posted: Tue Sep 24 07:23:26 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Sep-85 13:19:20 EDT
References: <2165@ukma.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: The Power Elite, Houston, TX
Lines: 47

There's something I find slightly confusing in all these dicussions on net.med
about Holism as opposed to Conventional Medicine.

All Holism means is to stand back & look at the whole of a problem.

The antonym for Holism isn't Conventional, it's Reductionism.

Reductionism means to break the problem up into parts small enough to analyse
independently.

Everyone uses Holism and Reductionism in solving a problem. In fact once you
have the problem broken down into parts you can understand you typically
analyse each part Holistically.

The size of the parts that you end up with depends on your problem solving
ability, your intelligence, the amount of experience you have in the area,
and so on. It's generally a good idea to make sure that the parts you end up
with are small enough for *you* to understand. Otherwise you're not going
to solve the problem. It's also a good idea to make sure that the parts aren't
smaller than you can handle. Otherwise you may find that you can't see the
forest for the trees. <wry smile at the use of a cliche>

Now then, I'm sure that all of you will agree that a computer program is a
much less complex object than a human being. Anone who doesn't should start
learning more about CS than what they gathered from 2001 and War Games.

The accepted method of attacking a programming problem of any given size is
modularisation and structured programming. Both of these techniques involve
reducing the problem to peices that you can understand... they are reductionist
in nature.

However when they are used well they aid in the understanding of the program
as a whole.

I know of no programmer who would claim that they Holistically Understand the
system you're using at this very moment, a system that's far far less complex
than the simplest patient a Holistic doctor is supposed to treat.

Unless you're somehow omniscient, you have to apply reductionistic techniques
to understand the patient. Why then do you consider yourself a Holistic
Practicioner?

Or are you just using "Holistic" as a buzz-word to confuse people into
thinking that you have something new, something that generations of GPs
haven't been using anyway? Are you selling this decade's "Organic food"?

If so, I'll just 'n' past any message with "Holistic" in the title.


Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com