I am really interested in studies regarding the relationships between parts and wholes. I am especially interested in the way that our perception and understandings of our world is made up of parts and wholes and how these are brought together in a seamless way. Does anyone have any knowledge in this area?
A very interesting book on this item is Peter Simons, Parts, Oxford, 1987.
Mereology as a theory of parts and wholes was established by Lesiniewski in order to avoid some problems of set theory. (Problems with sets containing themselves, which is sometimes paradoxical, sometimes not).
Some expressions become simpler in mereology, e.g. sums of squares instead of sums of x so that x is a square etc.
For a couple of arguments and counter arguments including automatic translations see
http://philosophy-science-humanities-controversies.com/search.php?suche3=mereology&x=4&y=11
A very interesting book on this item is Peter Simons, Parts, Oxford, 1987.
Mereology as a theory of parts and wholes was established by Lesiniewski in order to avoid some problems of set theory. (Problems with sets containing themselves, which is sometimes paradoxical, sometimes not).
Some expressions become simpler in mereology, e.g. sums of squares instead of sums of x so that x is a square etc.
For a couple of arguments and counter arguments including automatic translations see
http://philosophy-science-humanities-controversies.com/search.php?suche3=mereology&x=4&y=11
I was looking at the link you sent Martin. Thank you for this. I need to spend more time thinking about this. Are you aware of literature that considers what could perhaps be thought of as perceptual metrology? What I mean by this is a parts-whole account of how we perceive and understand our worlds, how we bring the parts we apprehend together to form the whole worlds as meaningful experiences?
I think Lesniewski is quite mathematical and formal and maybe he is not so interesting for you at the moment. After rereading your question I found that it is more about perceiving. I have looked into some sources but didn’t find much helpful stuff. Christopher Peacocke is an author who worked especially on perception, but he doesn’t mention parts and wholes at all. The authors who worked on the subject of parts and wholes tend to be more formal like Hartry Field, David Lewis, David Armstrong and others.
As far as I can see, the perception of wholes and parts will be highly dependent on our language and our world views which are formed by our language use. But by that I’m telling you things that you already know, of course. E.g. “see-as” (see an object as an occurrence of a certain type of things) presupposes knowledge – another question is, if “to see something purely” is possible at all. I doubt that we will be able to detect parts in an object that doesn’t resemble any other object at all.
In Kafkas story “Die Sorge des Hausvaters” there occurs a “singular” object, called the “Odradek”. Maybe this is interesting for you. Another example is Paul Valery’s “objet ambigu”.
Here are some remarks from Peter Simons which might be interesting in relation to perception too:
Blueberries are part of the cake, but not “a” part of it. The front part of a car is part of the car but not “a” part of it. “A” part has an extra sense. What is a part of something is also part of it, but not vice versa. (p. 235).
Ontology: “part” is not a category, it is a transcendental. That means that there are different mereologies for states of affairs, for objects and for properties. (U. Meixner, Darmstadt, 2004, p. 44).
Not being a category means that we cannot speak of a set of objects that are described by being a part of something.
I couldn’t find the source for this old argument: atoms are parts of a door handle, but there are no “door handle-atoms”. This has to do with the transitivity of the part-of relation. Systems of mereology differ in relation to this.
Maybe I’ll find some more information in the days to come.
Thank yo for these toughest and references Martin. I have asked my library to get Simons and a Lesniewski. You have given me lots to think about.
Rafael, do you know of any writing on fractals in relation to part - wholes?
Paul,
If we take an organism to be this organism encompassing its niche, than this part, the niche, might be “bigger” than the object. But this is a logical flaw anyway. A cannot be “the unity of A and B”.
Non-mereological part-of relation: e.g. the property of having a total mass of 5 kg can be divided in the property of having a mass of 2 kg and the property of having a mass of 3 kg. (Armstrong II 98). This makes it necessary to assume universals. Therefore it is contested by many.
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