A holon (Greek: ὅλον, holon neuter form of ὅλος, holos "whole") is something that is simultaneously a whole and a part. The word was used by Arthur Koestler in his book The Ghost in the Machine (1967, p. 48) and the phrase to hólon is a Greek word preceding the Latin analogue universum, in the sense of totality, a whole.
A holon is a system (or phenomenon) that is an evolving self-organizing dissipative structure, composed of other holons, whose structures exist at a balance point between chaos and order. It is sometimes discussed in the context of self-organizing holarchic open systems (or, SOHO systems).[3] A holon is maintained by the throughput of matter–energy and information–entropy connected to other holons and is simultaneously a whole in itself and at the same time is nested within another holon and so is a part of something much larger than itself. On a non-physical level, words, ideas, sounds, emotions—everything that can be identified—is simultaneously part of something, and can be viewed as having parts of its own, similar to sign in regard of semiotics.