From Parts to Wholes (1980-1989)

"The principle that whole entities exhibit properties which are meaningful only when attributed to the whole, not to its parts - e.g. the smell of ammonia. Every model of human activity system exhibits properties as a whole entity which derive from it component activities and their structure, but cannot be reduced to them." (Peter Checkland, "Systems Thinking, Systems Practice", 1981)

"[Hierarchy is] the principle according to which entities meaningfully treated as wholes are built up of smaller entities which are themselves wholes […] and so on. In hierarchy, emergent properties denote the levels." (Peter Checkland, "Systems Thinking, Systems Practice", 1981)

"Degradation of a system as a whole does not mean that all its elements are beginning to disintegrate. Regress is a contradictory process: the whole falls apart but certain elements in it may progress. What is more, a system as a whole may progress while certain of its elements fall into decay. Thus, the progressive development of biological forms as a whole goes hand in hand with the degradation of certain species." (Alexander Spirkin, "Dialectical Materialism", 1983)

"Structure is the type of connection between the elements of a whole. […] . Structure is a composite whole, or an internally organised content. […] Structure implies not only the position of its elements in space but also their movement in time, their sequence and rhythm, the law of mutation of a process. So structure is actually the law or set of laws that determine a system's composition and functioning, its properties and stability." (Alexander Spirkin, "Dialectical Materialism", 1983)

"The defining attribute of harmony is a relationship between the elements of the whole in which the development of one of them is a condition for the development of the others or vice versa. In art, harmony may be understood as a form of relationship in which each element, while retaining a relative independence, contributes greater expressiveness to the whole and, at the same time and because of this, more fully expresses its own essence. Beauty may be defined as harmony of all the parts, united by that to which they belong in such a way that nothing can be added or taken away or changed without detriment to the whole." (Alexander Spirkin, "Dialectical Materialism", 1983)

"Parts and wholes evolve in consequence of their relationship, and the relationship itself evolves. These are the properties of things that we call dialectical: that one thing cannot exist without the other, that one acquires its properties from its relation to the other, that the properties of both evolve as a consequence of their interpenetration."  (Richard Levins & Richard C Lewontin, "The Dialectical Biologist", 1985)

On Continuity XVI (The Beginnings)

"Since [...] nature is a principle of motion and mutation [...] it is necessary that we should not be ignorant of what motion is [...] But motion appears to belong to things continuous; and the infinite first presents itself to the view in that which is continuous. [..] frequently [...] those who define the continuous, employ the nature or the infinite, as if that which is divisible to infinity is continuous." (Aristotle, "Physics", cca. 350 BC)

"Things are called continuous when the touching limits of each become one and the same and are contained in each other. Continuity is impossible if these extremities are two. […] Continuity belongs to things that naturally in virtue of their mutual contact form a unity. And in whatever way that which holds them together is one, so too will the whole be one."(Aristotle, "Physics", cca. 350 BC)

"When what surrounds, then, is not separate from the thing, but is in continuity with it, the thing is said to be in what surrounds it, not in the sense of in place, but as a part in a whole. But when the thing is separate or in contact, it is immediately ‘in’ the inner surface of the surrounding body, and this surface is neither a part of what is in it nor yet greater than its extension, but equal to it; for the extremities of things which touch are coincident." (Aristotle, "Physics", cca. 350 BC)

"Things [...] are some of them continuous [...] which are properly and peculiarly called 'magnitudes'; others are discontinuous, in a side-by-side arrangement, and, as it were, in heaps, which are called 'multitudes,' a flock, for instance, a people, a heap, a chorus, and the like. Wisdom, then, must be considered to be the knowledge of these two forms. Since, however, all multitude and magnitude are by their own nature of necessity infinite - for multitude starts from a definite root and never ceases increasing; and magnitude, when division beginning with a limited whole is carried on, cannot bring the dividing process to an end [...] and since sciences are always sciences of limited things, and never of infinites, it is accordingly evident that a science dealing with magnitude [...] or with multitude [...] could never be formulated. […] A science, however, would arise to deal with something separated from each of them, with quantity, set off from multitude, and size, set off from magnitude." (Nicomachus, cca. 100 AD) 

"But every continuum is actually existent. Therefore any of its parts is really existent in nature. But the parts of the continuum are infinite because there are not so many that there are not more, and therefore the infinite parts are actually existent." (William of Ockham, cca. 1320)

"It is established that every continuum has further parts, and not so many parts finite in number that there are not further parts, and has all its parts actually and simultaneously, and therefore every continuum has simultaneously and actually infinitely many parts." (Gregory of Rimini [Gregorii Ariminensis], "Lectura super primum et secundum sententiarum", cca. 1350)

On Coherence IV

"Man's general way of thinking of the totality, i.e. his general world view, is crucial for overall order of the human mind itself. If he thinks of the totality as constituted of independent fragments, then that is how his mind will tend to operate, but if he can include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken and without border (for every border is a division or break) then his mind will tend to move in a similar way, and from this will flow an orderly action within the whole." (David Bohm, "Wholeness and the Implicate Order", 1980)

"Nature is disordered, powerful and chaotic, and through fear of the chaos we impose system on it. We abhor complexity, and seek to simplify things whenever we can by whatever means we have at hand. We need to have an overall explanation of what the universe is and how it functions. In order to achieve this overall view we develop explanatory theories which will give structure to natural phenomena: we classify nature into a coherent system which appears to do what we say it does." (James Burke, "The Day the Universe Changed", 1985)

"Metaphor [is] a pervasive mode of understanding by which we project patterns from one domain of experience in order to structure another domain of a different kind. So conceived metaphor is not merely a linguistic mode of expression; rather, it is one of the chief cognitive structures by which we are able to have coherent, ordered experiences that we can reason about and make sense of. Through metaphor, we make use of patterns that obtain in our physical experience to organise our more abstract understanding. " (Mark Johnson, "The Body in the Mind", 1987)

"There is no coherent knowledge, i.e. no uniform comprehensive account of the world and the events in it. There is no comprehensive truth that goes beyond an enumeration of details, but there are many pieces of information, obtained in different ways from different sources and collected for the benefit of the curious. The best way of presenting such knowledge is the list - and the oldest scientific works were indeed lists of facts, parts, coincidences, problems in several specialized domains." (Paul K Feyerabend, "Farewell to Reason", 1987)

"When loops are present, the network is no longer singly connected and local propagation schemes will invariably run into trouble. [...] If we ignore the existence of loops and permit the nodes to continue communicating with each other as if the network were singly connected, messages may circulate indefinitely around the loops and process may not converges to a stable equilibrium. […] Such oscillations do not normally occur in probabilistic networks […] which tend to bring all messages to some stable equilibrium as time goes on. However, this asymptotic equilibrium is not coherent, in the sense that it does not represent the posterior probabilities of all nodes of the network." (Judea Pearl, "Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems: Networks of Plausible Inference", 1988)

"A world view is a system of co-ordinates or a frame of reference in which everything presented to us by our diverse experiences can be placed. It is a symbolic system of representation that allows us to integrate everything we know about the world and ourselves into a global picture, one that illuminates reality as it is presented to us within a certain culture. […] A world view is a coherent collection of concepts and theorems that must allow us to construct a global image of the world, and in this way to understand as many elements of our experience as possible." (Diederick Aerts et al, "World views: From Fragmentation to Integration", 1994)

"There are a variety of swarm topologies, but the only organization that holds a genuine plurality of shapes is the grand mesh. In fact, a plurality of truly divergent components can only remain coherent in a network. No other arrangement-chain, pyramid, tree, circle, hub-can contain true diversity working as a whole. This is why the network is nearly synonymous with democracy or the market." (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 1995)

"The role of science, like that of art, is to blend proximate imagery with more distant meaning, the parts we already understand with those given as new into larger patterns that are coherent enough to be acceptable as truth. Biologists know this relation by intuition during the course of fieldwork, as they struggle to make order out of the infinitely varying patterns of nature." (Edward O Wilson, "In Search of Nature", 1996)

"Falling between order and chaos, the moment of complexity is the point at which self-organizing systems emerge to create new patterns of coherence and structures of behaviour." (Mark C Taylor, "The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture", 2001)

On Coherence (-1949)

"Principles taken upon trust, consequences lamely deduced from them, want of coherence in the parts, and of evidence in the whole, these are every where to be met with in the systems of the most eminent philosophers, and seem to have drawn disgrace upon philosophy itself." (David Hume, "A Treatise of Human Nature", 1739-40)

"The critical mathematician has abandoned the search for truth. He no longer flatters himself that his propositions are or can be known to him or to any other human being to be true; and he contents himself with aiming at the correct, or the consistent. The distinction is not annulled nor even blurred by the reflection that consistency contains immanently a kind of truth. He is not absolutely certain, but he believes profoundly that it is possible to find various sets of a few propositions each such that the propositions of each set are compatible, that the propositions of each such set imply other propositions, and that the latter can be deduced from the former with certainty. That is to say, he believes that there are systems of coherent or consistent propositions, and he regards it his business to discover such systems. Any such system is a branch of mathematics." (Cassius J Keyser, Science, New Series, Vol. 35 (904), 1912)

"A system is said to be coherent if every fact in the system is related every other fact in the system by relations that are not merely conjunctive. A deductive system affords a good example of a coherent system." (Lizzie S Stebbing, "A modern introduction to logic", 1930)

"Even these humble objects reveal that our reality is not a mere collocation of elemental facts, but consists of units in which no part exists by itself, where each part points beyond itself and implies a larger whole. Facts and significance cease to be two concepts belonging to different realms, since a fact is always a fact in an intrinsically coherent whole. We could solve no problem of organization by solving it for each point separately, one after the other; the solution had to come for the whole. Thus we see how the problem of significance is closely bound up with the problem of the relation between the whole and its parts. It has been said: The whole is more than the sum of its parts. It is more correct to say that the whole is something else than the sum of its parts, because summing is a meaningless procedure, whereas the whole-part relationship is meaningful." (Kurt Koffka, "Principles of Gestalt Psychology", 1935)

"Statistics is a scientific discipline concerned with collection, analysis, and interpretation of data obtained from observation or experiment. The subject has a coherent structure based on the theory of Probability and includes many different procedures which contribute to research and development throughout the whole of Science and Technology." (Egon Pearson, 1936)

"[…] reality is a system, completely ordered and fully intelligible, with which thought in its advance is more and more identifying itself. We may look at the growth of knowledge […] as an attempt by our mind to return to union with things as they are in their ordered wholeness. […] and if we take this view, our notion of truth is marked out for us. Truth is the approximation of thought to reality […] Its measure is the distance thought has travelled […] toward that intelligible system […] The degree of truth of a particular proposition is to be judged in the first instance by its coherence with experience as a whole, ultimately by its coherence with that further whole, all comprehensive and fully articulated, in which thought can come to rest." (Brand Blanshard, "The Nature of Thought" Vol. II, 1939)

"It is difficult, however, to learn all these things from situations such as occur in everyday life. What we need is a series of abstract and quite impersonal situations to argue about in which one side is surely right and the other surely wrong. The best source of such situations for our purposes is geometry. Consequently we shall study geometric situations in order to get practice in straight thinking and logical argument, and in order to see how it is possible to arrange all the ideas associated with a given subject in a coherent, logical system that is free from contradictions. That is, we shall regard the proof of each proposition of geometry as an example of correct method in argumentation, and shall come to regard geometry as our ideal of an abstract logical system. Later, when we have acquired some skill in abstract reasoning, we shall try to see how much of this skill we can apply to problems from real life." (George D Birkhoff & Ralph Beately, "Basic Geometry", 1940)

"[…] there is probably less difference between the positions of a mathematician and of a physicist than is generally supposed, [...] the mathematician is in much more direct contact with reality. This may seem a paradox, since it is the physicist who deals with the subject-matter usually described as 'real', but [...] [a physicist] is trying to correlate the incoherent body of crude fact confronting him with some definite and orderly scheme of abstract relations, the kind of scheme he can borrow only from mathematics." (Godfrey H Hardy, "A Mathematician's Apology", 1940)

"Induction is the process of discovering general laws by the observation and combination of particular instances. […] Induction tries to find regularity and coherence behind the observations. Its most conspicuous instruments are generalization, specialization, analogy. Tentative generalization starts from an effort to understand the observed facts; it is based on analogy, and tested by further special cases." (George Pólya, "How to solve it", 1945)

Richard L Daft - Collected Quotes

"A mental model can be thought of as an internal picture that affects a leader's actions and relationships with others. Mental models are theories people hold about specific systems in the world and their expected behavior." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience" , 2002)

"Systems thinking means the ability to see the synergy of the whole rather than just the separate elements of a system and to learn to reinforce or change whole system patterns. Many people have been trained to solve problems by breaking a complex system, such as an organization, into discrete parts and working to make each part perform as well as possible. However, the success of each piece does not add up to the success of the whole. to the success of the whole. In fact, sometimes changing one part to make it better actually makes the whole system function less effectively." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience", 2002)

"Systems thinking is a mental discipline and framework for seeing patterns and interrelationships. It is important to see organizational systems as a whole because of their complexity. Complexity can overwhelm managers, undermining confidence. When leaders can see the structures that underlie complex situations, they can facilitate improvement. But doing that requires a focus on the big picture." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience", 2002)

"A symbol is an object, act, or event that conveys meaning to others. Symbols can be considered a rich, non-verbal language that vibrantly conveys the organization’s important values concerning how people relate to one another and interact with the environment" (Richard L Daft & Dorothy Marcic, "Understanding Management" 5th Ed., 2006)

"Data are raw facts and figures that by themselves may be useless. To be useful, data must be processed into finished information, that is, data converted into a meaningful and useful context for specific users. An increasing challenge for managers is being able to identify and access useful information." (Richard L Daft & Dorothy Marcic, "Understanding Management" 5th Ed., 2006)

"The receiver decodes the symbols to interpret the meaning of the message. Encoding and decoding are potential sources for communication errors because knowledge, attitudes, and context act as filters and create noise when translating from symbols to meaning. Finally, feedback occurs when the receiver responds to the sender’s communication with a return message. Without feedback, the communication is one-way; with feedback, it is two-way. Feedback is a powerful aid to communication effectiveness because it enables the sender to determine whether the receiver correctly interpreted the message." (Richard L Daft & Dorothy Marcic, "Understanding Management" 5th Ed., 2006)

"A paradigm is a shared mindset that represents a fundamental way of thinking about, perceiving, and understanding the world." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience" 4th Ed., 2008)

"Synergy is the combined action that occurs when people work together to create new alternatives and solutions. In addition, the greatest opportunity for synergy occurs when people have different viewpoints, because the differences present new opportunities. The essence of synergy is to value and respect differences and take advantage of them to build on strengths and compensate for weaknesses." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience" 4th Ed., 2008)

"Synergy occurs when organizational parts interact to produce a joint effect that is greater than the sum of the parts acting alone. As a result the organization may attain a special advantage with respect to cost, market power, technology, or employee." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience" 4th Ed., 2008)

On Synergy I

 "Synergy is the only word in our language that means behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the separately observed behaviors of any of the system's separate parts or any subassembly of the system's parts." (R Buckminster Fuller, "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth", 1963)

"Synergy means behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior of their parts taken separately." (R Buckminster Fuller, "Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking", 1975)

"There is a multilayering of global networks in the key strategic activities that structure and destructure the planet. When these multilayered networks overlap in some node, when there is a node that belongs to different networks, two major consequences follow. First, economies of synergy between these different networks take place in that node: between financial markets and media businesses; or between academic research and technology development and innovation; between politics and media." (Manuel Castells, "The Rise of the Network Society", 1996)

"With the growing interest in complex adaptive systems, artificial life, swarms and simulated societies, the concept of “collective intelligence” is coming more and more to the fore. The basic idea is that a group of individuals (e. g. people, insects, robots, or software agents) can be smart in a way that none of its members is. Complex, apparently intelligent behavior may emerge from the synergy created by simple interactions between individuals that follow simple rules." (Francis Heylighen, "Collective Intelligence and its Implementation on the Web", 1999)

"Systems thinking means the ability to see the synergy of the whole rather than just the separate elements of a system and to learn to reinforce or change whole system patterns. Many people have been trained to solve problems by breaking a complex system, such as an organization, into discrete parts and working to make each part perform as well as possible. However, the success of each piece does not add up to the success of the whole. to the success of the whole. In fact, sometimes changing one part to make it better actually makes the whole system function less effectively." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience", 2002)

"Self-organization can be seen as a spontaneous coordination of the interactions between the components of the system, so as to maximize their synergy. This requires the propagation and processing of information, as different components perceive different aspects of the situation, while their shared goal requires this information to be integrated. The resulting process is characterized by distributed cognition: different components participate in different ways to the overall gathering and processing of information, thus collectively solving the problems posed by any perceived deviation between the present situation and the desired situation." (Carlos Gershenson & Francis Heylighen, "How can we think the complex?", 2004)

"Synergy is the combined action that occurs when people work together to create new alternatives and solutions. In addition, the greatest opportunity for synergy occurs when people have different viewpoints, because the differences present new opportunities. The essence of synergy is to value and respect differences and take advantage of them to build on strengths and compensate for weaknesses." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience" 4th Ed., 2008)

"Synergy occurs when organizational parts interact to produce a joint effect that is greater than the sum of the parts acting alone. As a result the organization may attain a special advantage with respect to cost, market power, technology, or employee." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience" 4th Ed., 2008)

"In short, synergy is the consequence of the energy expended in creating order. It is locked up in the viable system created, be it an organism or a social system. It is at the level of the system. It is not discernible at the level of the system. It is not discernible at the level of the system's components. Whenever the system is dismembered to examine its components, this binding energy dissipates." (J-C Spender, "Organizational Knowledge, Collective Practice and Penrose Rents", 2009)

"Synergy is defined as the surplus gained by working together. A task which couldn’t be fulfilled by one individual, can be completed by the work of different individuals together. To maximize synergy, first, the initial task is divided into different sub-tasks. Different agents perform different tasks, which is called division of labor. An end product of one work is used for another work, which is called workflow. Finally, everything needs to be put together. We call this aggregation. This isn’t as linear as it looks. At every step in the process it can happen that a task is divided into sub tasks or aggregated with other tasks." (Evo Busseniers, "Self-organization versus hierarchical organization", [thesis] 2018)

Complex Systems III

"Complexity must be grown from simple systems that already work." (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 1995)

"Even though these complex systems differ in detail, the question of coherence under change is the central enigma for each." (John H Holland," Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity", 1995)

"By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly (that is, by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modification of a precursor, system, because any precursors to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional." (Michael Behe, "Darwin’s Black Box", 1996)

"A dictionary definition of the word ‘complex’ is: ‘consisting of interconnected or interwoven parts’ […] Loosely speaking, the complexity of a system is the amount of information needed in order to describe it. The complexity depends on the level of detail required in the description. A more formal definition can be understood in a simple way. If we have a system that could have many possible states, but we would like to specify which state it is actually in, then the number of binary digits (bits) we need to specify this particular state is related to the number of states that are possible." (Yaneer Bar-Yamm, "Dynamics of Complexity", 1997)

"When the behavior of the system depends on the behavior of the parts, the complexity of the whole must involve a description of the parts, thus it is large. The smaller the parts that must be described to describe the behavior of the whole, the larger the complexity of the entire system. […] A complex system is a system formed out of many components whose behavior is emergent, that is, the behavior of the system cannot be simply inferred from the behavior of its components." (Yaneer Bar-Yamm, "Dynamics of Complexity", 1997)

"Complex systems operate under conditions far from equilibrium. Complex systems need a constant flow of energy to change, evolve and survive as complex entities. Equilibrium, symmetry and complete stability mean death. Just as the flow, of energy is necessary to fight entropy and maintain the complex structure of the system, society can only survive as a process. It is defined not by its origins or its goals, but by what it is doing." (Paul Cilliers,"Complexity and Postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems", 1998)

"There is no over-arching theory of complexity that allows us to ignore the contingent aspects of complex systems. If something really is complex, it cannot by adequately described by means of a simple theory. Engaging with complexity entails engaging with specific complex systems. Despite this we can, at a very basic level, make general remarks concerning the conditions for complex behaviour and the dynamics of complex systems. Furthermore, I suggest that complex systems can be modelled." (Paul Cilliers," Complexity and Postmodernism", 1998)

"The self-similarity of fractal structures implies that there is some redundancy because of the repetition of details at all scales. Even though some of these structures may appear to teeter on the edge of randomness, they actually represent complex systems at the interface of order and disorder."  (Edward Beltrami, "What is Random?: Chaos and Order in Mathematics and Life", 1999)

On Emergence III

"The principle that whole entities exhibit properties which are meaningful only when attributed to the whole, not to its parts - e.g. the smell of ammonia. Every model of human activity system exhibits properties as a whole entity which derive from it component activities and their structure, but cannot be reduced to them." (Peter Checkland, "Systems Thinking, Systems Practice", 1981)

"[Hierarchy is] the principle according to which entities meaningfully treated as wholes are built up of smaller entities which are themselves wholes […] and so on. In hierarchy, emergent properties denote the levels." (Peter Checkland, "Systems Thinking, Systems Practice", 1981)

"At the other far extreme, we find many systems ordered as a patchwork of parallel operations, very much as in the neural network of a brain or in a colony of ants. Action in these systems proceeds in a messy cascade of interdependent events. Instead of the discrete ticks of cause and effect that run a clock, a thousand clock springs try to simultaneously run a parallel system. Since there is no chain of command, the particular action of any single spring diffuses into the whole, making it easier for the sum of the whole to overwhelm the parts of the whole. What emerges from the collective is not a series of critical individual actions but a multitude of simultaneous actions whose collective pattern is far more important. This is the swarm model." (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 1995)

"Clearly, complex adaptive systems have a tendency to give rise to other complex adaptive systems. […] The appearance of more and more complex forms is not a phenomenon restricted to the evolution of complex adaptive systems, although for those systems the possibility arises of a selective advantage being associated under certain circumstances with increased complexity." (Murray Gell-Mann, "What is Complexity?", Complexity Vol 1 (1), 1995)

"A complex system is a system formed out of many components whose behavior is emergent, that is, the behavior of the system cannot be simply inferred from the behavior of its components. The amount of information necessary to describe the behavior of such a system is a measure of its complexity." (Yaneer Bar-Yamm, "Dynamics of Complexity", 1997)

"It may not be obvious at first, but the study of emergence and model-building go hand in hand. The essence of model-building is shearing away detail to get at essential elements. A model, by concentrating on selected aspects of the world, makes possible the prediction and planning that reveal new possibilities. That is exactly the problem we face in trying to develop a scientific understanding of emergence." (John H Holland, "Emergence" , Philosophica 59, 1997)

"Emergent self-organization in multi-agent systems appears to contradict the second law of thermodynamics. This paradox has been explained in terms of a coupling between the macro level that hosts self-organization (and an apparent reduction in entropy), and the micro level (where random processes greatly increase entropy). Metaphorically, the micro level serves as an entropy 'sink', permitting overall system entropy to increase while sequestering this increase from the interactions where self-organization is desired." (H Van Dyke Parunak & Sven Brueckner, "Entropy and Self-Organization in Multi-Agent Systems", Proceedings of the International Conference on Autonomous Agents, 2001)

"Although the potential for chaos resides in every system, chaos, when it emerges, frequently stays within the bounds of its attractor(s): No point or pattern of points is ever repeated, but some form of patterning emerges, rather than randomness. Life scientists in different areas have noticed that life seems able to balance order and chaos at a place of balance known as the edge of chaos. Observations from both nature and artificial life suggest that the edge of chaos favors evolutionary adaptation." (Terry Cooke-Davies et al, "Exploring the Complexity of Projects", 2009)

"If universality is one of the observed characteristics of complex dynamical systems in many fields of study, a second characteristic that flows from the study of these systems is that of emergence. As self-organizing systems go about their daily business, they are constantly exchanging matter and energy with their environment, and this allows them to remain in a state that is far from equilibrium. That allows spontaneous behavior to give rise to new patterns." (Terry Cooke-Davies et al, "Exploring the Complexity of Projects", 2009)

"The notion of emergence is used in a variety of disciplines such as evolutionary biology, the philosophy of mind and sociology, as well as in computational and complexity theory. It is associated with non-reductive naturalism, which claims that a hierarchy of levels of reality exist. While the emergent level is constituted by the underlying level, it is nevertheless autonomous from the constituting level. As a naturalistic theory, it excludes non-natural explanations such as vitalistic forces or entelechy. As non-reductive naturalism, emergence theory claims that higher-level entities cannot be explained by lower-level entities." (Martin Neumann, "An Epistemological Gap in Simulation Technologies and the Science of Society", 2011)

Systems Thinking IV

"One of the strongest benefits of the systems thinking perspective is that it can help you learn to ask the right questions. This is an important first step toward understanding a problem. […] Much of the value of systems thinking comes from the different framework that it gives us for looking at problems in new ways." (Virginia Anderson & Lauren Johnson, "Systems Thinking Basics: From Concepts to Causal Loops", 1997)

"[...] information feedback about the real world not only alters our decisions within the context of existing frames and decision rules but also feeds back to alter our mental models. As our mental models change we change the structure of our systems, creating different decision rules and new strategies. The same information, processed and interpreted by a different decision rule, now yields a different decision. Altering the structure of our systems then alters their patterns of behavior. The development of systems thinking is a double-loop learning process in which we replace a reductionist, narrow, short-run, static view of the world with a holistic, broad, long-term, dynamic view and then redesign our policies and institutions accordingly." (John D Sterman, "Business dynamics: Systems thinking and modeling for a complex world", 2000)

"Systems thinking means the ability to see the synergy of the whole rather than just the separate elements of a system and to learn to reinforce or change whole system patterns. Many people have been trained to solve problems by breaking a complex system, such as an organization, into discrete parts and working to make each part perform as well as possible. However, the success of each piece does not add up to the success of the whole. to the success of the whole. In fact, sometimes changing one part to make it better actually makes the whole system function less effectively." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience", 2002)

"Deep change in mental models, or double-loop learning, arises when evidence not only alters our decisions within the context of existing frames, but also feeds back to alter our mental models. As our mental models change, we change the structure of our systems, creating different decision rules and new strategies. The same information, interpreted by a different model, now yields a different decision. Systems thinking is an iterative learning process in which we replace a reductionist, narrow, short-run, static view of the world with a holistic, broad, long-term, dynamic view, reinventing our policies and institutions accordingly." (John D Sterman, "Learning in and about complex systems", Systems Thinking Vol. 3 2003)

"There exists an alternative to reductionism for studying systems. This alternative is known as holism. Holism considers systems to be more than the sum of their parts. It is of course interested in the parts and particularly the networks of relationships between the parts, but primarily in terms of how they give rise to and sustain in existence the new entity that is the whole whether it be a river system, an automobile, a philosophical system or a quality system." (Michael C. Jackson, "Systems Thinking: Creative Holism for Manager", 2003) 

"Systems thinking is only an epistemology, a particular way of describing the world. It does not tell us what the world is. Hence, strictly speaking, we should never say of something in the world: ‘It is a system’, only: ‘It may be described as a system.’" (John Mingers, Realising" Systems Thinking: Knowledge and Action in Management Science", 2006)

"At a time when the world is more messy, more crowded, more interconnected, more interdependent, and more rapidly changing than ever before, the more ways of seeing, the better. The systems-thinking lens allows us to reclaim our intuition about whole systems and hone our abilities to understand parts, see interconnections, ask 'what-if' questions about possible future behaviors, and be creative and courageous about system redesign. (Donella H Meadows, "Thinking in Systems: A Primer", 2008)

"In ecology, we are often interested in exploring the behavior of whole systems of species or ecosystem composed of individual components which interact through biological processes. We are interested not simply in the dynamics of each species or component in isolation, but the dynamics of each species or component in the context of all the others and how those coupled dynamics account for properties of the system as a whole, such as its persistence. This is what people seem to mean when they say that ecology is ‘holistic’, an otherwise rather vague term." (John Pastor, "Mathematical Ecology of Populations and Ecosystems", 2008)

"Systems thinking is a mental discipline and framework for seeing patterns and interrelationships. It is important to see organizational systems as a whole because of their complexity. Complexity can overwhelm managers, undermining confidence. When leaders can see the structures that underlie complex situations, they can facilitate improvement. But doing that requires a focus on the big picture." (Richard L Daft, "The Leadership Experience", 2008)  

"Holism [is] the art - in contrast with reductionism - of seeing a complex system as a whole. Holism knows the limits to its understanding; it acknowledges that the system has its wildness, its privacy, its own reasons, its defenses against invasive explanation." (David Fleming, "Lean Logic", 2016)

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Systems Thinking II

"The systems approach to problems focuses on systems taken as a whole, not on their parts taken separately. Such an approach is concerned with total - system performance even when a change in only one or a few of its parts is contemplated because there are some properties of systems that can only be treated adequately from a holistic point of view. These properties derive from the relationship between parts of systems: how the parts interact and fit together." (Russell L Ackoff, "Towards a System of Systems Concepts", 1971)

"Early scientific thinking was holistic, but speculative - the modern scientific temper reacted by being empirical, but atomistic. Neither is free from error, the former because it replaces factual inquiry with faith and insight, and the latter because it sacrifices coherence at the altar of facticity. We witness today another shift in ways of thinking: the shift toward rigorous but holistic theories. This means thinking in terms of facts and events in the context of wholes, forming integrated sets with their own properties and relationships."(Ervin László, "Introduction to Systems Philosophy", 1972) 

“The notion of ‘system’ has gained central importance in contemporary science, society and life. In many fields of endeavor, the necessity of a ‘systems approach’ or ‘systems thinking’ is emphasized, new professions called ‘systems engineering’, ‘systems analysis’ and the like have come into being, and there can be little doubt that this this concept marks a genuine, necessary, and consequential development in science and world-view.” (Ervin László, “Introduction to Systems Philosophy: Toward a New Paradigm of Contemporary Thought”, 1972)

"A company is a multidimensional system capable of growth, expansion, and self-regulation. It is, therefore, not a thing but a set of interacting forces. Any theory of organization must be capable of reflecting a company's many facets, its dynamism, and its basic orderliness. When company organization is reviewed, or when reorganizing a company, it must be looked upon as a whole, as a total system." (Albert Low, "Zen and Creative Management", 1976)

"There is a strong current in contemporary culture advocating ‘holistic’ views as some sort of cure-all […] Reductionism implies attention to a lower level while holistic implies attention to higher level. These are intertwined in any satisfactory description: and each entails some loss relative to our cognitive preferences, as well as some gain [...] there is no whole system without an interconnection of its parts and there is no whole system without an environment." (Francisco Varela, "On being autonomous: The lessons of natural history for systems theory", 1977)

"Holism traditionally says that a collection of beings may have a collective property that cannot be inferred from the properties of its members." (C West Churchman, "The Systems Approach and Its Enemies" , 1979) 

"Systems thinking is a special form of holistic thinking - dealing with wholes rather than parts. One way of thinking about this is in terms of a hierarchy of levels of biological organization and of the different 'emergent' properties that are evident in say, the whole plant (e.g. wilting) that are not evident at the level of the cell (loss of turgor). It is also possible to bring different perspectives to bear on these different levels of organization. Holistic thinking starts by looking at the nature and behaviour of the whole system that those participating have agreed to be worthy of study. This involves: (i) taking multiple partial views of 'reality' […] (ii) placing conceptual boundaries around the whole, or system of interest and (iii) devising ways of representing systems of interest." (C J Pearson and R L Ison, "Agronomy of Grassland Systems", 1987)

"Systems thinking is most effective when it’s used to look at a problem in a new way, not to advocate a predetermined solution. Strong advocacy will create resistance - both to your ideas, and to systems thinking itself. Present systems thinking in the spirit of inquiry, not inquisition." (Virginia Anderson & Lauren Johnson, "Systems Thinking Basics: From Concepts to Causal Loops", 1997)

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The Web of Life III

All knowledge is profitable; profitable in its ennobling effect on the character, in the pleasure it imparts in its acquisition, as well as in the power it gives over the operations of mind and of matter. All knowledge is useful; every part of this complex system of nature is connected with every other. Nothing is isolated. The discovery of to-day, which appears unconnected with any useful process, may, in the course of a few years, become the fruitful source of a thousand inventions." (Joseph Henry, "Report of the Secretary" [Sixth Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1851], 1852)

"The hosts of living organisms are not random creatures, they can be classified in battalions and regiments. Neither are they isolated creatures, for every thread of life is inter-twined with others in a complex web." (John A Thomson, "The System of Animate Nature" Vol. 1, 1920)

"The human mind is so complex and things are so tangled up with each other that, to explain a blade of straw, one would have to take to pieces an entire universe. A definition is a sack of flour compressed into a thimble." (Rémy de Gourmont, "Decadence and Other Essays on the Culture of Ideas", 1921)

"The new paradigm may be called a holistic world view, seeing the world as an integrated whole rather than a dissociated collection of parts. It may also be called an ecological view, if the term 'ecological' is used in a much broader and deeper sense than usual. Deep ecological awareness recognizes the fundamental interdependence of all phenomena and the fact that, as individuals and societies we are all embedded in (and ultimately dependent on) the cyclical process of nature." (Fritjof Capra & Gunter A Pauli, "Steering business toward sustainability", 1995)

"These three insights - the network pattern, the flow of energy, and the nutrient cycles—are essential to the new scientific conception of life. Scientists have formulated them in complicated technical language. They speak of 'autopoietic networks', 'dissipative structures', and 'catalytic cycles'. But the basic phenomena described by those technical terms are the web of life, the flow of energy, and the cycles of nature." (Fritjof Capra," Turn, Turn, Turn: Understanding Nature’s Cycles", 1997)

"All living organisms must feed on continual flows of matter and energy: from their environment to stay alive, and all living organisms continually produce waste. However, an ecosystem generates no net waste, one species' waste being another species' food. Thus, matter cycles continually through the web of life." (Fritjof Capra, "The Hidden Connections", 2002)

"When we look at the world around us, we find that we are not thrown into chaos and randomness but are part of a great order, a grand symphony of life. Every molecule in our body was once a part of previous bodies-living or nonliving-and will be a part of future bodies. In this sense, our body will not die but will live on, again and again, because life lives on. We share not only life's molecules but also its basic principles of organization with the rest of the living world. Arid since our mind, too, is embodied, our concepts and metaphors are embedded in the web of life together with our bodies and brains. We belong to the universe, we are at home in it, and this experience of belonging can make our lives profoundly meaningful." (Fritjof Capra, "The Hidden Connections", 2002)

"All living systems are networks of smaller components, and the web of life as a whole is a multilayered structure of living systems nesting within other living systems - networks within networks." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"In other words, the web of life consists of networks within networks. At each scale, under closer scrutiny, the nodes of the network reveal themselves as smaller networks. We tend to arange these systems, all nesting within larger systems, in a hierarchical scheme by placing the larger systems above the smaller ones in pyramid fashion. But this is a human projection. In nature there is no 'above' or 'below', and there are no hierarchies. There are only networks nesting within other networks." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

Marcus Aurelius - Collected Quotes

"Always take the short cut; and that is the rational one. Therefore say and do everything according to soundest reason." (Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations". cca. 121–180 AD)

 

"And in the case of superior things like stars, we discover a kind of unity in separation. The higher we rise on the scale of being, the easier it is to discern a connection even among things separated by vast distances." (Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations". cca. 121–180 AD)

 

"Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul; and observe how all things have reference to one perception, the perception of this one living being; and how all things act with one movement; and how all things are the cooperating causes of all things which exist; observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the contexture of the web." (Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations". cca. 121–180 AD)

 

"Either all things proceed from one intelligent source and come together as in one body, and the part ought not to find fault with what is done for the benefit of the whole; or there are only atoms, and nothing else than a mixture and dispersion. Why, then, art thou disturbed? Say to this ruling faculty, Art thou dead, art thou corrupted, art thou playing the hypocrite, art thou become a beast, dost thou herd and feed with the rest?" (Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations". cca. 121–180 AD)

 

"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth." (Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations", cca. 121–180 AD)

"Look at everything that exists, and observe that it is already in dissolution and change, and as it were putrefaction or dispersion, or that everything is so constituted in nature as to die." (Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations" X. cca. 121–180 AD)

 

"Look to the essence of a thing, whether it be a point of doctrine, of practice, or of interpretation." (Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations", cca. 121–180 AD)

"In the series of things those which follow are always aptly fitted to those which have gone before; for this series is not like a mere enumeration of disjointed things, which has only a necessary sequence, but it is a rational connection: and as all existing things are arranged together harmoniously, so the things which come into existence exhibit no mere succession, but a certain wonderful relationship." (Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations", cca. 180 AD)

 

"Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life." (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, cca. 121–180)

 

"Observe the movements of the stars as if you were running their courses with them, and let your mind constantly dwell on the changes of the elements into each other." (Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations", cca. 121–180 AD)

 

"Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.“ (Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations", cca. 121–180 AD)

"The other reason is that what happens to the individual is a cause of well-being in what directs the world - of its well-being, its fulfillment, or its very existence, even. Because the whole is damaged if you cut away anything - anything at all - from its continuity and its coherence. Not only its parts, but its purposes. And that's what you're doing when you complain: hacking and destroying." (Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations", cca. 121–180 AD)

 

"The universal intelligence puts itself in motion for every separate effect [...] or it puts itself in motion once, and everything else comes by way of a sequence in a manner; or individual elements are the origin of all things. In a word, if there is a god, all is well; and if chance rules, do not thou be governed by it." (Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations", cca. 121–180 AD)

 

"The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it." (Marcus Aurelius)

On Emergence II

"The component parts of a vegetable or animal substance do not lose their mechanical and chemical properties as separate agents, when, by a peculiar mode of juxtaposition, they, as an aggregate whole, acquire physiological or vital properties in addition. Those bodies continue, as before, to obey mechanical and chemical laws, in so far as the operation of those laws is not counteracted by the new laws which govern them as organized beings. […] Though there are laws which, like those of chemistry and physiology, owe their existence to a breach of the principle of Composition of Causes, it does not follow that these peculiar, or, as they might be termed, heteropathic laws, are not capable of composition with one another." (John S Mill, "A System of Logic: Ratioconative and Inductive", 1843) [the heteropathic laws is synonymous with emergence]

"The higher quality emerges from the lower level of existence and has its roots therein, but it emerges therefrom, and it does not belong to that lower level, but constitutes its possessor a new order of existent with its special laws of behaviour. The existence of emergent qualities thus described is something to be noted, as some would say, under the compulsion of brute empirical fact, or, as I should prefer to say in less harsh terms, to be accepted with the ‘natural piety’ of the investigator. It admits no explanation." (Samuel Alexander, "Space, Time and Deity", 1922)

"[…] self-organization is the spontaneous emergence of new structures and new forms of behavior in open systems far from equilibrium, characterized by internal feedback loops and described mathematically by nonlinear equations." (Fritjof Capra, "The web of life: a new scientific understanding of living systems", 1996)

"When the behavior of the system depends on the behavior of the parts, the complexity of the whole must involve a description of the parts, thus it is large. The smaller the parts that must be described to describe the behavior of the whole, the larger the complexity of the entire system. […] A complex system is a system formed out of many components whose behavior is emergent, that is, the behavior of the system cannot be simply inferred from the behavior of its components." (Yaneer Bar-Yamm, "Dynamics of Complexity", 1997)

"Emergence is not really mysterious, although it may be complex. Emergence is brought about by the interactions between the parts of a system. The galloping horse illusion depends upon the persistence of the human retina/brain combination, for instance. Elemental gases bond in combination by sharing outer electrons, thereby altering the appearance and behavior of the combination. In every case of emergence, the source is interaction between the parts - sometimes, as with the brain, very many parts - so that the phenomenon defies simple explanation." (Derek Hitchins, "Advanced Systems Thinking, Engineering and Management", 2003)

"Another typical feature of theories of emergence is the layered view of nature. On this view, all things in nature belong to a certain level of existence, each according to its characteristic properties. These levels of existence constitute a hierarchy of increasing complexity that also corresponds to their order of appearance in the course of evolution." (Markus Eronen, "Emergence in the Philosophy of Mind", 2004)

"The basic concept of complexity theory is that systems show patterns of organization without organizer (autonomous or self-organization). Simple local interactions of many mutually interacting parts can lead to emergence of complex global structures. […] Complexity originates from the tendency of large dynamical systems to organize themselves into a critical state, with avalanches or 'punctuations' of all sizes. In the critical state, events which would otherwise be uncoupled became correlated." (Jochen Fromm, "The Emergence of Complexity", 2004)

"Complexity arises when emergent system-level phenomena are characterized by patterns in time or a given state space that have neither too much nor too little form. Neither in stasis nor changing randomly, these emergent phenomena are interesting, due to the coupling of individual and global behaviours as well as the difficulties they pose for prediction. Broad patterns of system behaviour may be predictable, but the system's specific path through a space of possible states is not." (Steve Maguire et al, "Complexity Science and Organization Studies", 2006)

"Every system that has existed emerged somehow, from somewhere, at some point. Complexity science emphasizes the study of how systems evolve through their disorganized parts into an organized whole." (Lawrence K Samuels, "Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action", 2013)

"Things evolve to evolve. Evolutionary processes are the linchpin of change. These processes of discovery represent a complexity of simple systems that flux in perpetual tension as they teeter at the edge of chaos. This whirlwind of emergence is responsible for the spontaneous order and higher, organized complexity so noticeable in biological evolution - one–celled critters beefing up to become multicellular organisms." (Lawrence K Samuels, "Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action", 2013)

On Complexity I

"[Disorganized complexity] is a problem in which the number of variables is very large, and one in which each of the many variables has a behavior which is individually erratic, or perhaps totally unknown. However, in spite of this helter-skelter, or unknown, behavior of all the individual variables, the system as a whole possesses certain orderly and analyzable average properties. [...] [Organized complexity is] not problems of disorganized complexity, to which statistical methods hold the key. They are all problems which involve dealing simultaneously with a sizable number of factors which are interrelated into an organic whole. They are all, in the language here proposed, problems of organized complexity." (Warren Weaver, "Science and Complexity", American Scientist Vol. 36, 1948)

"Crude complexity is ‘the length of the shortest message that will describe a system, at a given level of coarse graining, to someone at a distance, employing language, knowledge, and understanding that both parties share (and know they share) beforehand." (Murray Gell-Mann, "What is Complexity?" Complexity Vol. 1 (1), 1995)

"In contemplating natural phenomena, we frequently have to distinguish between effective complexity and logical depth. For example, the apparently complicated pattern of energy levels of atomic nuclei might easily be misattributed to some complex law at the fundamental level, but it is now believed to follow from a simple underlying theory of quarks, gluons, and photons, although lengthy calculations would be required to deduce the detailed pattern from the basic equations. Thus the pattern has a good deal of logical depth and very little effective complexity." (Murray Gell-Mann, "What is Complexity?", Complexity Vol. 1 (1), 1995)

"A dictionary definition of the word ‘complex’ is: ‘consisting of interconnected or interwoven parts’ […] Loosely speaking, the complexity of a system is the amount of information needed in order to describe it. The complexity depends on the level of detail required in the description. A more formal definition can be understood in a simple way. If we have a system that could have many possible states, but we would like to specify which state it is actually in, then the number of binary digits (bits) we need to specify this particular state is related to the number of states that are possible." (Yaneer Bar-Yamm, "Dynamics of Complexity", 1997)

"When the behavior of the system depends on the behavior of the parts, the complexity of the whole must involve a description of the parts, thus it is large. The smaller the parts that must be described to describe the behavior of the whole, the larger the complexity of the entire system. […] A complex system is a system formed out of many components whose behavior is emergent, that is, the behavior of the system cannot be simply inferred from the behavior of its components." (Yaneer Bar-Yamm, "Dynamics of Complexity", 1997)

"Complexity is that property of a model which makes it difficult to formulate its overall behaviour in a given language, even when given reasonably complete information about its atomic components and their inter-relations." (Bruce Edmonds, "Syntactic Measures of Complexity", 1999)

"[…] networks are the prerequisite for describing any complex system, indicating that complexity theory must inevitably stand on the shoulders of network theory. It is tempting to step in the footsteps of some of my predecessors and predict whether and when we will tame complexity. If nothing else, such a prediction could serve as a benchmark to be disproven. Looking back at the speed with which we disentangled the networks around us after the discovery of scale-free networks, one thing is sure: Once we stumble across the right vision of complexity, it will take little to bring it to fruition. When that will happen is one of the mysteries that keeps many of us going." (Albert-László Barabási, "Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life", 2002)

"Complexity is the characteristic property of complicated systems we don’t understand immediately. It is the amount of difficulties we face while trying to understand it. In this sense, complexity resides largely in the eye of the beholder - someone who is familiar with s.th. often sees less complexity than someone who is less familiar with it. [...] A complex system is created by evolutionary processes. There are multiple pathways by which a system can evolve. Many complex systems are similar, but each instance of a system is unique." (Jochen Fromm, The Emergence of Complexity, 2004)

"The basic concept of complexity theory is that systems show patterns of organization without organizer (autonomous or self-organization). Simple local interactions of many mutually interacting parts can lead to emergence of complex global structures. […] Complexity originates from the tendency of large dynamical systems to organize themselves into a critical state, with avalanches or 'punctuations' of all sizes. In the critical state, events which would otherwise be uncoupled became correlated." (Jochen Fromm, "The Emergence of Complexity", 2004)

"Complexity arises when emergent system-level phenomena are characterized by patterns in time or a given state space that have neither too much nor too little form. Neither in stasis nor changing randomly, these emergent phenomena are interesting, due to the coupling of individual and global behaviours as well as the difficulties they pose for prediction. Broad patterns of system behaviour may be predictable, but the system's specific path through a space of possible states is not." (Steve Maguire et al, "Complexity Science and Organization Studies", 2006)

🚀On Invention (1900-1949)

“With the extension of mathematical knowledge will it not finally become impossible for the single investigator to embrace all departments of this knowledge? In answer let me point out how thoroughly it is ingrained in mathematical science that every real advance goes hand in hand with the invention of sharper tools and simpler methods which at the same time assist in understanding earlier theories and to cast aside some more complicated developments. It is therefore possible for the individual investigator, when he makes these sharper tools and simpler methods his own, to find his way more easily in the various branches of mathematics than is possible in any other science.” (David Hilbert, “Mathematical Problems”, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society Vol. 8, 1902)

"The chief end of mathematical instruction is to develop certain powers of the mind, and among these the intuition is not the least precious. By it the mathematical world comes in contact with the real world, and even if pure mathematics could do without it, it would always be necessary to turn to it to bridge the gulf between symbol and reality. The practician will always need it, and for one mathematician there are a hundred practicians. However, for the mathematician himself the power is necessary, for while we demonstrate by logic, we create by intuition; and we have more to do than to criticize others’ theorems, we must invent new ones, this art, intuition teaches us." (Henri Poincaré, "The Value of Science", 1905)

"It is the intuition of pure number, that of pure logical forms, which illumines and directs those we have called analysts. This it is which enables them not alone to demonstrate, but also to invent." (Henri Poincaré, "The Value of Science", 1905)

"Unadulterated, unsweetened observations are what the real nature-lover craves. No man can invent incidents and traits as interesting as the reality." (John Burroughs, "Ways of Nature", 1905)

"Reduced to their most pregnant difference, empiricism means the habit of explaining wholes by parts, and rationalism means the habit of explaining parts by wholes. Rationalism thus preserves affinities with monism, since wholeness goes with union, while empiricism inclines to pluralistic views. No philosophy can ever be anything but a summary sketch, a picture of the world in abridgment, a foreshortened bird's-eye view of the perspective of events. And the first thing to notice is this, that the only material we have at our disposal for making a picture of the whole world is supplied by the various portions of that world of which we have already had experience. We can invent no new forms of conception, applicable to the whole exclusively, and not suggested originally by the parts." (William James, "A Pluralistic Universe", 1908)

"The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention. It is the most important product of his creative brain. Its ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of the forces of nature to human needs. This is the difficult task of the inventor who is often misunderstood and unrewarded. But he finds ample compensation in the pleasing exercises of his powers and in the knowledge of being one of that exceptionally privileged class without whom the race would have long ago perished in the bitter struggle against pitiless elements. Speaking for myself, I have already had more than my full measure of this exquisite enjoyment; so much, that for many years my life was little short of continuous rapture." (Nikola Tesla, "My Inventions", 1919) 

“We can invent as many theories we like, and any one of them can be made to fit the facts. But that theory is always preferred which makes the fewest number of assumptions.” (Albert Einstein [interview] 1929)

"It seems that the human mind has first to construct forms independently, before we can find them in things. Kepler’s marvelous achievement is a particularly fine example of the truth that knowledge cannot spring from experience alone, but only from the comparison of the inventions of the intellect with observed fact." (Albert Einstein, 1930)

"Mathematics has been called the science of the infinite. Indeed, the mathematician invents finite constructions by which questions are decided that by their very nature refer to the infinite. This is his glory." (Hermann Weyl, "Levels of Infinity", cca. 1930)

"The discoveries in physical science, the triumphs in invention, attest the value of the process of trial and error. In large measure, these advances have been due to experimentation." (Louis Brandeis, "Judicial opinions", 1932)

"A great discovery solves a great problem but there is a grain of discovery in the solution of any problem. Your problem may be modest; but if it challenges your curiosity and brings into play your inventive faculties, and if you solve it by your own means, you may experience the tension and enjoy the triumph of discovery." (George Polya, “How to solve it”, 1944)

"The straight line of the geometers does not exist in the material universe. It is a pure abstraction, an invention of the imagination or, if one prefers, an idea of the Eternal Mind." (Eric T Bell, "The Magic of Numbers", 1946)

From Parts to Wholes (Unsourced)

"By the word symmetry […] one thinks of an external relationship between pleasing parts of a whole; mostly the word is used to refer to parts arranged regularly against one another around a centre. We have […] observed [these parts] one after the other, not always like following like, but rather a raising up from below, a strength out of weakness, a beauty out of ordinariness." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

"Every part is disposed to unite with the whole, that it may thereby escape from its own incompleteness." (Leonardo Da Vinci)

"If nature leads to mathematical forms of great simplicity and beauty - to forms that no one has previously encountered - we cannot help thinking that they are true and that they revealed genuine features of Nature." (Werner K Heisenberg)

"There is a fundamental error in separating the parts from the whole, the mistake of atomizing what should not be atomized. Unity and complementarity constitute reality." (Werner Heisenberg)

"The part always has a tendency to reunite with its whole in order to escape from its imperfection." (Leonardo Da Vinci)

"The whole is simpler than its parts." (Josiah W Gibbs)

"Whatever Nature undertakes, she can only accomplish it in a sequence. She never makes a leap. For example she could not produce a horse if it were not preceded by all the other animals on which she ascends to the horse’s structure as if on the rungs of a ladder. Thus every one thing exists for the sake of all things and all for the sake of one; for the one is of course the all as well. Nature, despite her seeming diversity, is always a unity, a whole; and thus, when she manifests herself in any part of that whole, the rest must serve as a basis for that particular manifestation, and the latter must have a relationship to the rest of the system." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

From Parts to Wholes (1000-1699)

"Now the kind of philosophy under which we proceed in the whole and in the part is moral philosophy or ethics; because the whole was undertaken not for speculation but for practice."  (Dante Alighieri, "Epistolae" ["Letters"], cca. 14th century)

"Those who devised the eccentrics seen thereby in large measure to have solved the problem of apparent motions with approximate calculations. But meanwhile they introduced a good many ideas which apparently contradict the first principles of uniform motion. Nor could they elicit or deduce from the eccentrics the principal consideration, that is, the structure of the universe and the true symmetry of its parts."  (Nicolaus Copernicus, "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium", 1543)

"Given that annihilation of nature in its entirety is impossible, and that death and dissolution are not appropriate to the whole mass of this entire globe or star, from time to time, according to an established order, it is renewed, altered, changed, and transformed in all its parts." (Giordano Bruno, "The Ash Wednesday Supper", 1584)

"I tell you that if natural bodies have it from Nature to be moved by any movement, this can only be circular motion, nor is it possible that Nature has given to any of its integral bodies a propensity to be moved by straight motion. I have many confirmations of this proposition, but for the present one alone suffices, which is this. I suppose the parts of the universe to be in the best arrangement, so that none is out of its place, which is to say that Nature and God have perfectly arranged their structure. This being so, it is impossible for those parts to have it from Nature to be moved in straight, or in other than circular motion, because what moves straight changes place, and if it changes place naturally, then it was at first in a place preternatural to it, which goes against the supposition. Therefore, if the parts of the world are well ordered, straight motion is superfluous and not natural, and they can only have it when some body is forcibly removed from its natural place, to which it would then return by a straight line, for thus it appears that a part of the earth does [move] when separated from its whole. I said 'it appears to us', because I am not against thinking that not even for such an effect does Nature make use of straight line motion." (Galileo Galilei, [Letter to Francesco Ingoli] 1624)

"For any number there exists a corresponding even number which is its double. Hence the number of all numbers is not greater than the number of even numbers, that is, the whole is not greater than the part." (Gottfried W Leibniz, "De Arte Combinatoria", 1666)

"Consider however (imitating Mathematicians) certainty or truth to be like the whole; and probabilities [to be like] parts, such that probabilities would be to truths what an acute angle [is] to a right [angle]." (Gottfried W Leibniz, [letter to Vincent Placcius] 1687)

"To decrease geometrically is this, that in equal times, first the whole quantity then each of its successive remainders is diminished, always by a like proportional part.“ (John Napier, "The Construction of the Wonderful Canon of Logarithms", 1889)

From Parts to Wholes (BC)

"Further, the state is by nature clearly prior to the family and to the individual, since the whole is of necessity prior to the part; for example, if the whole body be destroyed, there will be no foot or hand, except in an equivocal sense, as we might speak of a stone hand; for when destroyed the hand will be no better than that. But things are defined by their working and power; and we ought not to say that they are the same when they no longer have their proper quality, but only that they have the same name." (Aristotle, Politics, 4th century BC)

"The infinite […] happens to subsist in a way contrary to what is asserted by others: for the infinite is not that beyond which there is nothing, but it is that of which there is always something beyond. […] But that pertaining to which there is nothing beyond is perfect and whole. […] that of which nothing is absent pertaining to the parts […] the whole is that pertaining to which there is nothing beyond. But that pertaining to which something external is absent, that is not all […] But nothing is perfect which has not an end; and the end is a bound. On this account […] Parmenides spoke better than Melissus: for the latter says that the infinite is a whole; but the former, that the whole is finite, and equally balanced from the middle: for to conjoin the infinite with the universe and the whole, is not to connect line with line." (Aristotle, Physics, cca. 4th century BC)

"The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing; and therefore he is like a part in relation to the whole." (Aristotle, Politics, 4th century BC)

"The totality is not, as it were, a mere heap, but the whole is something besides the parts." (Aristotle, "Metaphysics", cca. 335-323 BC)
 
"The whole is more than the sum of its parts." (Aristotle, "Metaphysics", cca. 335-323 BC)
 
"And the whole [is] greater than the part." (Euclid, "Elements", cca. 300 BC)

"We can get some idea of a whole from a part, but never knowledge or exact opinion. Special histories therefore contribute very little to the knowledge of the whole and conviction of its truth. It is only indeed by study of the interconnexion of all the particulars, their resemblances and differences, that we are enabled at least to make a general survey, and thus derive both benefit and pleasure from history." (Polybius, "The Histories", cca. 150 BC)
 
"I say, then, that the universe and all its parts both received their first order from divine providence, and are at all times administered by it." (Marcus T Cicero, "De Natura Deorum" ["On the Nature of the Gods"], 45 BC)
 
"Order gives due measure to the members of a work considered separately, and symmetrical agreement to the proportions of the whole. It is an adjustment according to quantity. By this I mean the selection of modules from the members of the work itself and, starting from these individual parts of members, constructing the whole work to correspond." (Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, "De architectura" ["On Architecture"], cca. 15 BC)

From Parts to Wholes (1700-1799)

"Probability is a degree of certainty and it differs from certainty as a part from a whole." (Jacob Bernoulli, "Ars Conjectandi", 1713)

"Principles taken upon trust, consequences lamely deduced from them, want of coherence in the parts, and of evidence in the whole, these are every where to be met with in the systems of the most eminent philosophers, and seem to have drawn disgrace upon philosophy itself." (David Hume, "A Treatise of Human Nature", 1739-40)

"As the analysis of a substantial composite terminates only in a part which is not a whole, that is, in a simple part, so synthesis terminates only in a whole which is not a part, that is, the world." (Immanuel Kant, "Inaugural Dissertation", 1770)

"It is unjust that the whole of society should contribute towards an expence of which the benefit is confined to a part of the society." (Adam Smith, 1776)

"Is it reasonable to assume a purposiveness in all the parts of nature and to deny it to the whole?" —  Immanuel Kant, "Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View", 1784)

"Look round the world: contemplate the whole and every part of it: You will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions, to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain. All these various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy, which ravishes into admiration all men, who have ever contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human contrivance; of human design, thought, wisdom, and intelligence." (David Hume, "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion", 1779)

From Parts to Wholes (1800-1849)

"In every moment of her duration Nature is one connected whole; in every moment each individual part must be what it is, because all the others are what they are; and you could not remove a single grain of sand from its place, without thereby, although perhaps imperceptibly to you, altering something throughout all parts of the immeasurable whole." (Johann G Fichte, "The Vocation of Man”, 1800)

"It is the destiny of our race to become united into one great body, thoroughly connected in all its parts, and possessed of similar culture. Nature, and even the passions and vices of Man, have from the beginning tended towards this end. A great part of the way towards it is already passed, and we may surely calculate that it will in time be reached." (Johann G Fichte, "The Vocation of Man", 1800)

"It is probable that what we call thought is not an actual being, but no more than the relation between certain parts of that infinitely varied mass, of which the rest of the universe is composed, and which ceases to exist as soon as those parts change their position with regard to each other." (Percy B Shelley, "On a Future State", 1815)

"Each of the parts of philosophy is a philosophical whole, a circle rounded and complete in itself. In each of these parts, however, the philosophical Idea is found in a particular specificality or medium. The single circle, because it is a real totality, bursts through the limits imposed by its special medium, and gives rise to a wider circle. The whole of philosophy in this way resembles a circle of circles. The Idea appears in each single circle, but, at the same time, the whole Idea is constituted by the system of these peculiar phases, and each is a necessary member of the organisation." (Georg W F Hegel, "Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences", 1816)

"When the whole and the parts are seen at once, as mutually producing and explaining each other, as unity in multeity, there results shapeliness." (Samuel T Coleridge, "Letters", 1836)

"Science is nothing but the finding of analogy, identity, in the most remote parts." (Ralph W Emerson, 1837)

"So far we have studies how, for each commodity by itself, the law of demand in connection with the conditions of production of that commodity, determines the price of it and regulates the incomes of its producers. We considered as given and invariable the prices of other commodities and the incomes of other producers; but, in reality the economic system is a whole of which the parts are connected and react on each other. An increase in the incomes of the producers of commodity A will affect the demand for commodities Band C, etc., and the incomes of their producers, and, by its reaction will involve a change in the demand for A. It seems, therefore, as if, for a complete and rigorous solution of the problems relative to some parts of the economic system, it were indispensable to take the entire system into consideration. But this would surpass the powers of mathematical analysis and of our practical methods of calculation, even if the values of all the constants could be assigned to them numerically." (Antoine A Cournot, "Researches into the Mathematical Principles of the Theory of Wealth", 1838)

"The component parts of a vegetable or animal substance do not lose their mechanical and chemical properties as separate agents, when, by a peculiar mode of juxtaposition, they, as an aggregate whole, acquire physiological or vital properties in addition. Those bodies continue, as before, to obey mechanical and chemical laws, in so far as the operation of those laws is not counteracted by the new laws which govern them as organized beings. […] Though there are laws which, like those of chemistry and physiology, owe their existence to a breach of the principle of Composition of Causes, it does not follow that these peculiar, or, as they might be termed, heteropathic laws, are not capable of composition with one another." (John S Mill, "A System of Logic: Ratioconative and Inductive", 1843) [the heteropathic laws is synonymous with emergence]