"You cannot ask questions of that magnitude!" "It is blasphemous to undertake consideration of universal problems, since the universe is the province of the deity -- just try to cultivate your garden."

There is comfort in the small size of most inquiries. The microanalytic approach avoids the inherent claims of arrogance (seen above) for the wholist approach. But who is to say that this arrogance is only that of the wholist and not of the partist as well?

Few arguments are about substance and process, whereas most are about starting points. One such perennial starting point difference is in the scope, setting the wholist and the partist against each other. In the microanalytic approach of the partist, a large judgement is made at the outset, eliminating the vast majority of the parts that are viewed to be irrelevant to the question proposed. There are also hazards to the wholist approach in which there may be insufficiency of the tools to take on an understanding of the magnitude required.

The truth is likely to reside within the largest sphere; however, the focus on the truth within that sphere will be imprecise in wholism, whereas it might be dead wrong in partism. A good deal of the effort invested by whole institutes of technicians and those directed to answer small questions might come up with very precise answers that are totally irrelevant. Such examples have happened on a grand scale when an overall project such as "the conquest of cancer" parceled out different approaches with various problems to be solved by analytic patterning. An example might be the hypothesis that cancer is caused by a virus and an antiviral program would treat or prevent it. Whatever this approach may have done for other truly viral diseases, it certainly has not advanced cancer care, as was its original design, despite a multi-billion dollar outlay in effort, tools, and direct application of this so far unrewarding hypothesis.

"Health", "well-being" and "society" are wholist concepts which can be reduced to fragments at one's peril. An atomistic reductionism, no matter how targeted, often comes to grief with a spiral of increasing resource consumption with diminishing yield. For example, targeting some specific social problems such as drug control, teenage pregnancy, urban poverty, population control, crime -- and scores of other "vertical programs" have proven how thoroughly imbedded the part is in the whole, such that the "definitive solution" in lopping off one head of the hydra has barely noticeable effects in the organic whole.

Totality can scarcely be analyzed except through its parts, but each of those parts is subsumed in the totality in which it resonates. If the part loses it identity, it could still be studied as part of the whole. If one is deaf to the resonance, the part under study may dissolve in the futility of focused effort when the focus is aberrant.

The methodology of the wholist strategy attempts to encompass the entire domain at all times during the inquiry. The process considers all possible factors bearing on the subject from the outset and tries to pare down the unessential elements which are successively removed until a relatively pure answer is obtained. In the case of this wholist strategy, tentative answers along the way are most often correct, but imprecise until the ultimate answer is reached.

The methodology of the partist strategy deals only with the part of the totality at the beginning and at any given time throughout. It assumes a small number of factors at the outset to be both necessary and sufficient to explain the question under study. If the assumptions at the outset turn out to be false, the entire analysis of that part should be dropped and the next combination be tested to see if this approach is more rewarding. Successive formulations are tried and discarded until an ultimate answer is reached. The partist strategy therefore gives tentative answers along the way that are always precisely stated but most often incorrect until a correct one is finally found, often by random forward movement through potential combinations.

The critical factor in which the choice of methodology is most rewarding is time. If time is of no consequence, the optimal resolution of any given problem might be achieved through either route. But when time is of the essence, the wholist approach is far more dependable.

If one is confronting a very large problem, a wholist strategy is quite conservative and risk-averse in any critical time-dependent resolution. In using the analogy of the "big game" that would decide the championship after long preliminary contests, the outcome is decided more often than not by mistakes committed rather than partial successes achieved. The wholist strategy may not make as much yardage in any given play or in any single series, but is much more resistant to fatal errors. In contrast, the partist strategy may make spectacular yardage in any one play or series, but is invariably open to fatal mistakes during that interval of trial and error of these partist approaches.

It is as presumptuous to be a partist strategist as the partist would say is inherent within the wholist strategy. An example might be taken from an anecdote of two weary dusty travelers coming to an equatorial lake in the heat of the day. They approached the lake cautiously, and asked one of the indigenous natives fishing from the bank, "Are there any snakes in this lake?" After interpretation, the response returned "No way." "There can't be no snakes in this lake, no way." The dusty travelers immediately stripped and went for a swim bathing in the lake until they had cooled off. On return, they were dressing and preparing for their onward journey when they stopped to ask the fishermen "How come there are no snakes in the lake?" The native responded with a grin when he understood the question "'Cuz," with a broad smile "de crocs done et them all up!"

Lumpers and splitters both work with risk. The lumpers run the hazard they may not get to the truth in embracing the whole of the universe that contains it, but have a very high likelihood of including it within their imprecise grasp. The splitters have a much higher likelihood of achieving an answer with some precision, to a question that may not have anything to do with the problem at hand.

We would like to stay alive, whether threatened by snakes, crocodiles, or any as yet unidentified peril as well, and should not presume we know the nature of the answer before we have a lead on the questions. The process of formulation of assumptions may narrow the universe of discourse to some degree based on collateral knowledge already achieved by partists. There is an aphorism in clinical care in medicine that goes "when you hear hoof beats, you think of horses before you think of zebras." That, of course, (I might add as a corollary) is true only if you are not in some parts of Africa where zebras outnumber horses!

It is quite disconcerting to the analytic experts with microscopic focus to have the wholist around who wishes a larger reference point to a big picture they would claim is denied to most men, and at least to them. "All of the above" is an unsatisfying answer say some scientists, since it is imprecise. If it is granted that it is imprecise, it at least has the considerable advantage of being more likely to contain the truth, and is less likely to be totally wrong, or irrelevant. It is highly probable that an iterative process of partist micro-analysis will never be able to construct a whole universe of proven truth. There is not "world enough and time" to reconstruct our understanding of the universe from these proven analyses even with a long time frame, so we can never be without an appreciation of the whole even if we must acknowledge that our focus on the big picture is perpetually fuzzy. "All of the above" remains a rational response to encompass the significant questions even after we exhaustively employ the partist strategy of precise microanalytic iteration.