Cyan, what you describe sounds a bit mystical, but there is an observable tendency for people to seek some magic bullet, some simple underlying factor which explains everything. Single underlying factor theories are usually wrong, of course, and phenomena often involve a lot of complex relationships which need to be taken into account; some who call themselves reductionists are enamored of over-simplified single factor views (the way certain evolutionary psychologists talk about genes comes to mind), and it is likely that anti-reductionism is partly motivated in some cases by opposition to those single factor views. However, understanding objects as wholes is not the way to recognize their true complexity; it's just another way to hide that complexity.