organismic

Organismic is an adjective describing anything related to an organism or to the organism as a whole, with emphasis on integration, interdependence, and self-regulation within a living system. In biology and related fields, the term often signals a preference for holistic explanations of structure and function over reductionist, part-by-part analyses.

The word derives from organism, with the adjectival suffix -ic, and is attested in English from the 19th century. In scholarly usage, organismic is used to contrast holistic or systemic perspectives with mechanistic or purely component-based approaches. It appears in discussions of how tissues, organs, and regulatory networks work together to maintain homeostasis and coordinated behavior in living beings.

In psychology and the philosophy of biology, organismic thinking frequently highlights emergent properties and the unity of the organism. A notable example is the organismic valuing process within humanistic psychology, a concept associated with Carl Rogers, describing an intrinsic guide to preferences and behavior that integrates the whole person rather than isolated traits.

Related concepts include holism, systems theory, and integrative physiology. In contemporary science, more specialized terms such as systems biology and integrative physiology are often used, but organismic remains a useful historical and stylistic descriptor for approaches that foreground the organism as a coherent, self-regulating whole.