Holism reductionism debate

Our Sixth Form psychology class have been exploring the holism reductionism debate through the analogy of an orange.

The students moved from exploring a holistic view, looking at the orange as a whole and thinking about its environment, the community and systems involved in getting the orange to us, through to the levels of analysis in line with the reductionist debate. The lowest level required analysis of the orange’s structure, and there were some fantastic images of the ‘juicy’ fruit.

Focusing on the idea of conditions, such as phobias, allowed the students to consider the application of the debate to real examples of behaviour. Who knew you could do so much with an orange!