[Joof]

Many larger systems are more than the sum of their parts. Enough that you could consider the grouping it's own entity. Ant hills are the canonical example because individual ants are recognizable as 'animals', but the function of an anthill clearly relies on a complex interaction between more simple ants.

Just as we are made of tiny organisms, bigger systems could be considered to be made of us.

[kirrent]

Hofstadter wrote a nice piece on how an ant colony could be thought to be an entity in itself. My favourite quote pasted from an online source:

Anteater: "I reject holism. I challenge you to tell me, for instance, how a holistic description of an ant colony sheds any more light on it than is shed by a description of the ants inside it, and their roles, and their, interrelationships. Any holistic explanation of an ant colony will inevitably fall far short of explaining where the consciousness experienced by an ant colony arises from."

[mdpopescu]

Unfortunately, this argument proves too much. Replace "and colony" with "human" and "ant" with "cell in a human body" - can you explain where the consciousness experienced by a human cell colony arises from?

(To avoid debating materialism vs idealism use another creature, say "chimp", instead of "human" - assuming that you agree that chimps have a consciousness.)

I am not fond of the holistic / emergent idea but I don't think "we can't figure out the exact place where the sum becomes larger than its parts" is a good argument against it.

[jameshart]

Hofstadter's anteater is a character in a dialog. You shouldn't assume it presents the author's conclusions directly. Indeed the point of the anteater is that with respect to ants, it's hardly an impartial source.

[Joof]

A simpler type of holism might simply state that information generated by a system is distinct from the individuals that compose that system. Bits form a computer, but only in groups.

Its more complicated with businesses because we are aware of the greater system and attempt to influence it.

[MawNicker]

Holism is inescapable. An ant is a holistic thought. When you talk about the parts of an ant hill you don't talk about the atoms in the ants. You talk about the ants. In that same way when you want talk about the ecosystems that contain ant hills you don't talk about individual ants. An anteater relates to the whole ant hill. The relationships a thing has are just as significant to what it is as the things it's composed of. Reductionism can only look inside things.