concept of holism is easily transferred from theory to practice; however, a holistic perspective rarely characterizes nursing research.
The introduction of the holistic concept into philosophy led to the schism between individualists and holists in general society as well as in the profession of nursing. Broadly, the individualist philosophy holds that social wholes have no substantial reality, and that propositions attributing properties or actions to a collectivity can be reduced, without residue, to a series of propositions about the relations and actions of individuals. The alternative view that social facts are not reducible to individual facts is commonly called holism. Holism has also caused conflict in historical analysis. In historical analysis, holism becomes historicism, which holds that each event may be understood only by viewing it within the context of a larger process of which it was a phase, or
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