Holism, Parts, Wholes

‘Holism’, strangely enough, given the absolute quality it indicates, is a concept that can only be grasped through negative examples: what it is contrary to, the paradigms to which it constitutes an alternative. Definitions of ‘holism’ thus usually involve the interdependence among the parts composing an individual object; their relationship with that object as their container and sum; its insertion within a context, environ-mental or cosmic; and crucially, the existence of an additional quid which defines that object as a totality independent of its components – the idea that ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.’ In all these senses, the significance of the relationship between ‘parts’ and ‘whole’ can be much broader than the medical and anatomical discussions with which we would most immediately associate it, and which are under the spotlight in this vol-ume. The breadth and malleability of the concept are key to a cultural history which is extremely long, despite the fact that ‘holism’ itself, like many such labels, can easily be seen as anachronistic if applied to the pre-modern world. This chapter aims to offer a glimpse of this long history and to illustrate the relevance of the Graeco-Roman past to our understanding of the idea of holism, and to its various manifestations throughout the centuries which separate us from the ancients.