ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to clarify some prominent versions of holism and to bring out the areas where the account of holism usually associated with semantics is relevant to the holism associated with our understanding of science. It explores an evaluation of a major objection that applies to all types of holism. The chapter takes up the challenge of major objection and shows how a minimal form of holism may nevertheless be vindicated. It concentrates on aspects that relate to cognition rather than on aspects that relate to social groupings of inquirers. The chapter describes that Davidsonian holism is a special case of Quinean holism. It discusses three ways of defining holism: confirmation holism, semantic holism and attribute holism. Confirmation holism is one of the widely discussed kinds of holism in the domain of philosophy of science.
