Part vs. Whole
(Linear vs. Non-linear)
Our brief introduction to the idea of linear versus non-linear functions (and accordingly the concepts of reductionism versus holism) in class the other day got me thinking about the ideas of part compared to whole in more general terms. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I kept relating these mathematical terms to a key word that I’d recently discovered through my own independent research. One of my biggest interests and passions is learning about sustainable food systems. Consequently, I’ve been reading a lot of the work of Michael Pollan, renowned food author/activist. By pondering what I learned in class, I was able to relate these mathematical concepts to a fundamental principle that Pollan puts forth.
Michael Pollan uses the theories of reductionism vs. holism in his book, In Defense of Food, with regards to his idea of “nutritionism.” His book outlines the problems that people are facing when it comes to choosing foods, and he offers his own ideas about how to solve these problems, or better, wipe their existence. He describes the concept of nutritionism as the trend of studying and selecting foods solely based on their chemical components – nutrients. For example, when we think about eating a cheeseburger, we could see the cheeseburger as individual thing – one unit of food. What are we consuming? A cheeseburger, plain and simple. However, a nutritionist viewpoint would be to look at the burger, and not see a burger, but see fat, carbohydrates, maybe a little protein. The person would probably choose not to eat that burger, because all they see are way too many calories from fat. They would most likely opt for a spinach salad instead – ah, antioxidants, vitamins A, B, and K, iron! This, of course, would be the reductionist point of view – seeing something as its constituents, missing the bigger picture.
Pollan advocates the abandonment of nutritionist thinking and the adoption of what we would call, holistic thinking. The biggest misconception that nutritionism instills in society is that focusing on the parts, not the whole, will lead to a healthy diet. However, obsessing with the nutrients and forgetting about the big picture is what leads to those unhealthy crash diets (Atkins says throw out the carbs – they’re evil!) and strips the cultural aspect from eating meals. But we all know by now (hopefully) that carbs are an essential piece in the diet of humans. If we really think that the nutrient themselves are the only important things, we should all be taking pills – instead of just taking daily multivitamins or something, we should take pills for every essential vitamin and nutrient. But the idea that we should give up eating food altogether seems absurd to us. There’s more to food than its nutritional components – there’s also a huge cultural significance placed on eating. We miss something, we lose the greater picture, if we only think of things in terms of their parts.
So why is reductionist thinking (or linear thinking) so popular? For one thing, it’s just logical. Like with our ice cream example in class, if one pint of ice cream costs three dollars, then two pints will cost six dollars, three pints will cost nine dollars, and so on. It makes sense. We think that we can understand something more if we can understand what it’s made up of. We’ve been taught that attention to detail is paramount and comprehension of the bigger picture will follow after we lose ourselves in the details.
Linear thinking makes sense, but we lose something by breaking things up into pieces. Whether it’s the ice cream example (each pint is three dollars, but if you buy five pints, you get a discount! The discount would be ignored in a linear system, but is integral to the non-linear one), or Pollan’s nutritionism (I like to think of my dad’s mac and cheese as a traditional dish special to my family – not solely as a heaping mass of fat and carbohydrate molecules), the whole means more to us than the part.
Nice.
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