Holism / Reductionism Flashcards
What is Gestalts’ notion and which part of the debate does it fit with?
‘The whole is greater than the sum of its parts’, his is a holistic view.
Which approach is known as being holistic?
Humanism.
What is meant by reductionism?
Explaining a behaviour by breaking it down into its basic component parts.
What is meant by environmental reductionism?
A stimulus leads to a response no matter what
What are levels of the holistic explanation?
Stages of a holistic explanation that increase the complexity of an explanation.
What is meant by biological reductionism?
Behaviours can be tracked down to a biological level, e.g. genes and neurotransmitters.
What is meant by holism?
Looks at higher level explanations and shows how many aspects can interact together to provide a complete picture of behaviour.
What is the lowest level of holistic explanation?
Basic physiological units.
What is the highest level of holistic explanation?
Societal, political, ecological.
AO3:
Basis of scientific principles.
Reductionist ideas form the basis of scientific principles, the simplified ideas help to focus in on specific areas that may be linked a certain behaviour or trait.
AO3:
Basic explanation.
Reductionist ideas oversimplify complex phenomena, a limitation of the stance is that it ignores other factors that may be contributing to a certain behaviour and focus in on a narrower basis.
AO3:
Conformity to a group.
Some aspects of behaviour only occur within a group of people, this shows that different aspects of the environment can change the way we respond to the same stimulus due to conformity.
AO3:
Rigorous testing.
Holistic explanations don’t lend themselves to rigorous testing, the explanations are typically case studies and have an idiographic basis which cannot be tested thoroughly such as nomothetic laws.
AO3:
Interactionism.
Interactionism, this is a middle-ground between the two extremes. It considers both the whole and the specific to produce a more realistic stance.
