From Parts to Wholes (1920-1929)

"True artistic experience is never passive, for the spectator is obliged to participate, as it were, in the continuous or discontinuous variations of proportions, positions, lines and planes. Moreover, he must see clearly how this play of repeated or non-repeated changes may give rise to a new harmony of relations which will constitute the unity of the work. Every part becomes organized into a whole with the other parts. All the parts contribute to the unity of the composition, none of them assuming a dominant place in the whole." (Theo van Doesburg, 'Grundbegriffe der neuen Gestaltenden Kunst', 1921-23)

"It has long seemed obvious - and is, in fact, the characteristic tone of European science - that 'science' means breaking up complexes into their component elements. Isolate the elements, discover their laws, then reassemble them, and the problem is solved. All wholes are reduced to pieces and piecewise relations between pieces. The fundamental 'formula' of Gestalt theory might be expressed in this way. There are wholes, the behaviour of which is not determined by that of their individual elements, but where the part-processes are themselves determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole. It is the hope of Gestalt theory to determine the nature of such wholes." (Max Wertheimer, "Gestalt Theory," 1924)

"It seems clear that [set theory] violates against the essence of the continuum, which, by its very nature, cannot at all be battered into a single set of elements. Not the relationship of an element to a set, but of a part to a whole ought to be taken as a basis for the analysis of a continuum." (Hermann Weyl, "Riemanns geometrische Ideen, ihre Auswirkungen und ihre Verknüpfung mit der Gruppentheorie", 1925)

"In all the previous cases of wholes, we have nowhere been able to argue from the parts of the whole. Compared to its parts, the whole constituted by them is something quite different, something creatively new, as we have seen. Creative evolution synthesises from the parts a new entity not only different from them, but quite transcending them. That is the essence of a whole. It is always transcendent to its parts, and its character cannot be inferred from the characters of its parts." (Jan Smuts, "Holism and Evolution", 1926)

"(Holism is) the tendency in nature to form wholes that are greater than the sum of the parts through creative evolution [...]" (Jan Smuts, "Holism and Evolution", 1926)

"The characteristic of the organism is first that it is more than the sum of its parts and second that the single processes are ordered for the maintenance of the whole." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, 1928)

What in the whole denotes a causal equilibrium process, appears for the part as a teleological event." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, 1929)