“A system is more than the sum of its parts.”

Source: Sociology and modern systems theory (1967), p. 42.

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Walter F. Buckley 36
American sociologist 1922–2006

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“A system is more than the sum of its parts; it is an indivisible whole. 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.”

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“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,”

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Source: Principles of Gestalt Psychology, 1935, p. 176
Context: 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.

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

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

“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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Source: 1920s, Kritische Theorie der Formbildung (1928, 1933), p. 305; as cited in: Cliff Hooker ed. (2011) Philosophy of Complex Systems. p. 189

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