%0 Journal Article
%T So what do we really mean when we say that systems biology is holistic?
%A Derek Gatherer
%J BMC Systems Biology
%D 2010
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1752-0509-4-22
%X Inter-theoretic reductionism in the strict sense envisaged by its creators from the 1930s to the 1960s is largely impractical in biology, and was effectively abandoned by the early 1970s in favour of a more piecemeal approach using individual reductive explanations. Classical holism was a stillborn theory of the 1920s, but the term survived in several fields as a loose umbrella designation for various kinds of anti-reductionism which often differ markedly. Several of these different anti-reductionisms are on display in the holistic rhetoric of the recent systems biology literature. This debate also coincides with a time when interesting arguments are being proposed within the philosophy of biology for a new kind of reductionism.Engaging more deeply with these issues should sharpen our ideas concerning the philosophy of systems biology and its future best methodology. As with previous decisive moments in the history of biology, only those theories that immediately suggest relatively easy experiments will be winners.An old debate has made a surprising, or perhaps not so surprising, reappearance in systems biology: that of reductionism versus holism. Surprising: in the sense that the mainstream of molecular biology has for at least 30 years been relatively uninterested in the matter, content with a compromise that allows lab work to proceed without too much philosophical agonizing. Unsurprising: in that general systems theory has churned with the debate for nearly 75 years. Once systems theory met molecular biology, it was probably only a matter of time before the controversy went pandemic. At least 35 articles in the systems biology literature from 2003 to the early part of 2009 touched on this issue [1-35]. However, much confusion is apparent in the variation in what is understood by the term holistic, and also from overstatements as to the degree that "traditional" molecular biology is truly reductionist. Some of the systems biology articles give the impression that
%U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1752-0509/4/22