International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

An epistemological attitude which tends to consider the organism as a legitimate level of understanding, as opposed to a reductionist (mechanistic) attitude which aims to explain the properties of the whole through the ones of its elements". (E. SCHWARZ, 1993, p. 10)

A quite different definition, of a neat metaphorical nature is also given by SCHWARZ: "social philosophy of the 19 C. according to which the social body works like an organism, i.e. as a coherent whole, whose every part carries out some function needed to the whole "(Ibid)

This last view is as old as the Roman parable about "the members and the stomach" and, while basically acceptable to begin with, is surely also a mechanistic and excessively simplistic view of societies (even the lower organisms one)

In short, organicism is in effect an "epistemological attitude" that should be scrutinized closely when applied.

However, organicism led biology out of its vitalist dead end and is also at the roots of systemics

Organicism appeared at the beginning of the 20th Century in the field of biology., (J.H. WOODGER and L.von BERTALANFFY), as a reaction against mechanicism, as well as vitalism.

Organicism, which is interested in the global properties of organisms, as supplementary to the properties of their parts, became through von BERTALANFFY's influence, one of the original roots of systemics.