We have all heard the expression, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts".
Is this, in your view, true or false? In what way?

Is a "living body" equal to the sum of its cells, molecules and sub-atomic particles... or is it "something" more? Should these sub-atomic particles be considered "the same" if they are thrown around around in a random chaos rather than "organized" into a "living body". If they should be considered the same, why, then, do we say that one body is "alive" and another is "dead"?

Other examples concerning the same principle:
* da Vinci paintings
* Symphonies of Mozart
* Love among friends, family, and members of teams and organizations
* The ecology of nature

Can the universe be reduced to its smallest constituents or will the whole always be "something more" than the sum of its parts?

A participatory universe is "greater" in terms of potential richness of phenomena than any subset because of the complexity interactions develop among systems.

The microscopic theory of the world is important because it explains a lot. A lot of the large scale properties are emergent. They are not fundamental.

Since all kinds of interactions can connect many systems with each other one cannot naively ignore for example that the properties of a particle are influenced by collective properties of many other particles as well. An example is the gravitational field.

The universe is not a sum of parts. It is what we choose to simplify the description and it has worked because the full thing is very complicated differently. We have no evidence yet of phenomena that convincingly cannot be explained by microscopic local theories.

Do we really know that life is emergent and not a fundamental part of the universe? What if what we call "the evolution of life" is a manifestation of a principle that has been existent "since the beginning"? The same could go for consciousness, love and artistic creativity.

Again, what about subjective experiences such as "consciousness", "thoughts", "feelings", "love"?

The problematic reduction is conceptual, reducing a conscious, experiencing being to "the physical". At the conceptual level of "the physical" the dominating metaphor is the "machine". While local physical theories may potentially be able to explain the physical workings of the machine (although this is not guaranteed), their power to explain remains constrained by the limitations of the "machine" as metaphor. While physical laws may be reducible to fundamental ones, concepts are not so reducible.


PairTheBoard

The expression gives a glimpse of Aristotle's transcendentalism. Could be considered a "counterfeit" whole.

Music

Have been working on a variation of the problem academically. Try rephrasing it in terms of reductionism, for instance about social phenomena. If you take anti-individualism in social science for instance, those views affirm that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Whereas individualism/psychologism denies it for social entities. For some things, it is the case that they are mere mereological constructions. I think a guide to thinking about it is that we individuate things in terms of capacities. And if a capacity has no proper subject on the level of parts, then the whole is not a mere sum. But that doesn't entail that it exists apart from its parts. I can elaborate another day, but just some quick food for thought.

That is a good example of a candidate type! 😁

Kurt Koffka said it differently:

"The whole is other than the sum of its parts".

The whole is the product of its parts. So yeah, that's greater.

We tend to reduce everything into smaller components. The components designed to minimise external connections. Like bricks that a house is constructed. The idea is that we can ignore cross connections between the independent components.

This process allows us to decompose some extremely complex process into a lot of smaller less complex process that interacts in some comprehensible fashion. Thus we can reduce a process whose complexity is beyond us, to a collection of smaller comprehensible components.

The problem is that, in the real world, the reduction process is always a simplification. There is always a loss of information along the way, likely cross connections between the components.

Or to put it another way, "we can't sum the parts without missing bits out". So in practice, the sum of the parts always ends up being less than the whole. This is just a limitation on the way we think.

If at all relevant i'd be interested in the implications of retrocausality on this question. Also, in the question it may be more useful to use the word - different - and define what kind of different, as opposed to 'greater'.

Wholes are greater in the sense that pure information (which is what arises out of an ordered sum of parts), is capable of triggering other physical events.

Thus enzymes are greater than the sum of their parts, as they catalyze other events. "Whore" is greater than wh and ore as it triggers disgust and derision in other minds. Paint on a canvas arranged just so triggers emotions in brains in specific ways. etc.

Is the whole sometimes less than the sum of its parts? I think it is.

Can you give an example?

The academic whole,

Einstein's famous formula,

Facebook,

a BS sentence even when perfectly good words are assembled in it.

Speak for yourself. I kinda like the word and it triggers warm and fuzzy feelings of milk and cookies.

Yeah, I'm in Eastern Europe right now - all the insults involve one or another of your relatives being either a whore or a gypsy. But in American parlance among a certain demographic I assume it is a positive. Is the whore greater than the sum of its parts though? That's the real question.

Also, lol, trust an academic to be following the orthodoxy of being positive toward sex work. That's like one of the ten commandments of being a refined human being in academic circles. Respect for whores.

Not if one of the parts is less than or equal to zero.

For instance, adding poop to a sandwich.

Guess that's an exception.

Sandwiches grow out manure..
Every molecule of your body has at some point or another been a piece of ****.

You might be a big walking turd, but I consider myself stardust.

You're me in another.

You're all me in another.

I'm re-used atoms.

Turbulent recycling until entropy wins out and the heat death of the universe ends all debate. Even the f**king gypsies won't be able to eke out a meager survival.