Write a discussion about whether or not a science such as astronomy can be pursued in a “holistic” manner.

My online dictionary defines “holistic” as follows: characterized by the belief that the parts of something are intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole. (More specifically, in medicine, it is defined as follows: characterized by the treatment of the whole person, taking into account mental and social factors, rather than just the symptoms of the disease.)

You have almost certainly already encountered the word “holistic” in a familiar context such as medicine. The implications of the word will depend to some extent on one’s perspective, but in general it would seem very likely to most listeners that a holistic viewpoint would indeed have value. Most of us would accept that the well-being of a patient might directly benefit from a doctor’s attention to the individual’s personality, psychology and state of mind, even if the specific treatment is focused on some ailment with a standard well-defined clinical course of treatment that has been proven through past application.

In this discussion, considered thoughts about whether holistic approaches may be more insightful, valuable, and productive than those with a more focused technical and mathematical underpinning. We will ask you to frame these remarks in the specific context of astronomy (the subject of this course), but also invite you to speculate on how that may depend on the discipline in question.

Consider and reflect upon the relevance of “holistic” approaches to astronomy, but also (if you wish) to other sciences of various kinds: from the life sciences such as biology and ecology, through the more technical engineering and physical disciplines, to very abstract pursuits such as the aforementioned pure mathematics. Do you believe, and can you provide a justification, to the contention that all science disciplines are open to broadly holistic approaches? Or are some of them, innately and uniquely, simply not amenable to such perspectives? Where does astronomy fit in this spectrum?