Understand the whole, or break it into parts. Both are incomplete.
Reductionism: understand a system by decomposing it into pieces and studying each. Holism: understand a system by looking at the whole — interactions, patterns, emergent behaviours.
| Reductionism | Holism |
|---|---|
| Analytical | Synthetic |
| Works bottom-up | Works top-down |
| Great for simple systems | Needed for complex ones |
| Misses emergence | Vague about mechanism |
Choosing one as your default. The physics toolkit is reductionist; the ecology toolkit is holistic. Problems choose their method.