"The basic ontological foundation of the healing biotope model is the assumption that the whole of reality is a web of symbiotically interlinked fluxes of information that forms a unified field of consciousness, structured as an open system with the characteristics of a living organism. Nature and the realm of human culture form holon, meaning that they are both entities with their own internal dynamics and interconnected parts of a larger system." Ana M. Esteves 2016:10
A holon (Greek: ὅλον < ὅλος = holos -> "whole") is something that is simultaneously a whole and a part. The word was coined by Arthur Koestler in his book The Ghost in the Machine (1967, p. 48). It describes the hybrid nature of sub-wholes and parts within in vivo systems. I.e. holons exist simultaneously as self-contained wholes in relation to their sub-ordinate parts, and as dependent parts when considered from the inverse direction.
Two observations were key for proposing this notion:
- complex systems evolve from simple systems much more rapidly when there are stable intermediate forms present in the evolutionary process than if they are not present.(cf Herbert A. Simon's parable of the two watchmakers] - wholes and parts in an absolute sense do not exist anywhere, nor in non-living matter (atomic and molecular structure), nor in living organisms, nor in social organizations
# See also social holon
Brian Cantwell Smith, "On the Origin of Objects" (MIT Press, 1996). webpage 