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Holism

Philosophy
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Holism asserts that systems and their properties should be viewed as wholes, not just as collections of parts. It opposes reductionism in science and philosophy.

Detailed Definition
Poetry exemplifies holism by integrating form, content, sound, and silence into indivisible meaning. Philosophically, it mirrors ecological or spiritual views where everything interconnects—encouraging readers to perceive relationships, contexts, and emergent patterns beyond isolated phenomena.
Example
Example in poetry:
William Blake’s “The Tyger” unites fire, craft, fear, and worship as inseparable; Wallace Stevens’s “The Idea of Order at Key West” shows singer, sea, and listeners as co-creating meaning; Seamus Heaney’s “Digging” fuses memory, labor, tool, and vocation; Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” links self, geese, prairie, and cosmos as one system; Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies treat life, death, art, and angels as interdependent; W.S. Merwin’s palm poems connect extinction, memory, language, and ecology as whole.
Additional Notes
Holism views systems as irreducible wholes. In poetry, it appears as integrated form-content: Bishop’s “Fish,” Rilke’s elegies. Students should avoid reductive analysis—meaning isn’t in isolated metaphors but total effect. Related to gestalt, entelechy, and ecology. Professors can use it to critique New Criticism’s compartmentalization.
Also Known As
Wholism Organicism Totalism Monism
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