The recent growth of the systems approach to biology provides a better conceptual framework within which to interpret holistic approaches to medicine. The reason is that systems biology respects the way in which the whole constrains the parts to behave in ways that are different from what they would do in isolation. Holistic treatments depend on the same insight and can therefore be successful in practice where reductionist approaches would fail.
Keywords: holistic biology; integrative medicine; sasang constitutional medicine; systems biology.