I'm bothered by the dilution/misuse/pollution of the word "holistic". "Holism" is an important notion, held even by stodgy professores like WVO Quine. It stand

I'm bothered by the dilution/misuse/pollution of the word "holistic". "Holism" is an important notion, held even by stodgy professores like WVO Quine. It stands in contrast to "reductionism", the alternate notion that things "boil down" to fundamental elements. It's related to "emergentism", but much less bold: while emergentism has to argue for novel properties in wholes, holism is simply saying that wholes exist. Emergentism is much easier to knock down -- as is naïve reductionism.