Ludwig von Bertalanffy - Parts Quotes

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While we can conceive of a sum [or aggregate] as being composed gradually, a system as a total of parts with its [multiplicative] interrelations has to be conceived of as being composed instantly.

Ludwig von Bertalanffy
Progress is only possible by passing from a state of undifferentiated wholeness to differentiation of parts.

Ludwig von Bertalanffy
The system problem is essentially the problem of the limitation of analytical procedures in science. This used to be expressed by half-metaphysical statements, such as emergent evolution or 'the whole is more than the sum of its parts,' but has a clear operational meaning.

Ludwig von Bertalanffy
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
Every organism represents a system, by which term we mean a complex of elements in mutual interaction. From this obvious statement the limitations of the analytical and summative conceptions must follow. First, it is impossible to resolve the phenomena of life completely into elementary units; for each individual part and each individual event depends not only on conditions within itself, but also to a greater or lesser extent on the conditions within the whole, or within superordinate units of which it is a part. Hence the behavior of an isolated part is, in general, different from its behavior within the context of the whole... Secondly, the actual whole shows properties that are absent from its isolated parts.

Ludwig von Bertalanffy
It is necessary to study not only parts and processes in isolation, but also to solve the decisive problems found in organization and order unifying them, resulting from dynamic interaction of parts, and making the the behavoir of the parts different when studied in isolation or within the whole.

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

Ludwig von Bertalanffy
You cannot sum up the behavior of the whole from the isolated parts, and you have to take into account the relations between the various subordinate systems which are super-ordinated to them in order to understand the behavior of the parts.

Ludwig von Bertalanffy