“The whole is simpler than its parts.”

—  Josiah Willard Gibbs

Quoted by Irving Fisher in "The Applications of Mathematics to the Social Sciences," Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 36, 225-243 (1930). Full article http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.bams/1183493954
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Josiah Willard Gibbs photo
Josiah Willard Gibbs 11
physicist 1839–1903

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“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

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Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

It loses its essential properties when it is taken apart. The elements of a system may themselves be systems, and every system may be part of a larger system.
Ackoff (1973) "Science in the Systems Age: beyond IE, OR and MS." in: Operations Research Vol 21, pp. 664.
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“I told about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. “It's that way with people, too,” he said, “only with people it's sometimes that the whole is less than the sum of the parts.””

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“When a mess, which is a system of problems, is taken apart, it loses its essential properties and so does each of its parts. The behavior of a mess depends more on how the treatment of its parts interact than how they act independently of each other. A partial solution to a whole system of problems is better than whole solutions of each of its parts taken separately.”

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William O. Douglas photo

“The whole, though larger than any of its parts, does not necessarily obscure their separate identities.”

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“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.”

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“A miracle is when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A miracle is when one plus one equals a thousand.”

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Source: The Alphabet of Grace

Euclid photo

“And the whole [is] greater than the part.”

Euclid book Elements

Καὶ τὸ ὅλον τοῦ μέρους μεῖζον
ἐστιν
Elements, Book I, Common Notion 8 (5 in certain editions)
Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book Η 1045a 8–10: "… the totality is not, as it were, a mere heap, but the whole is something besides the parts … [πάντων γὰρ ὅσα πλείω μέρη ἔχει καὶ μὴ ἔστιν οἷον σωρὸς τὸ πᾶν]"
Euclid’s Elements

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