Re:Ask HN: What Does “Holistic” Mean?
by smt88 on Wednesday September 09, 2020 @11:03PM
(#24428522)
It depends on context
The original meaning was about wholeness: studying or managing something as a whole.
It has been co-opted by alternative medicine, which is where you'll see the word most often. There is (and should be) a concept of holistic medicine, which could mean seeing the body as a whole instead of individual systems. Real medicine is going in this direction anyway, for example with the growing understanding of the link between the brain and gut.
For people marketing alternative medicine, it's a buzzword that makes people think of wholesome, and also that the seller is considering things that science-based medicine is missing.
The original meaning was about wholeness: studying or managing something as a whole.
It has been co-opted by alternative medicine, which is where you'll see the word most often. There is (and should be) a concept of holistic medicine, which could mean seeing the body as a whole instead of individual systems. Real medicine is going in this direction anyway, for example with the growing understanding of the link between the brain and gut.
For people marketing alternative medicine, it's a buzzword that makes people think of wholesome, and also that the seller is considering things that science-based medicine is missing.