What is a whole and how is one generated?

We are very used to thinking of wholes as composed by parts. That is, a whole is generated by gathering the necessary parts (which, crucially, already exist) and putting them together in some way such that a thing is made from the parts. This is the essence of manufacturing. In this view, wholes are “built up” from parts. The logic is recursive: the parts are themselves manufactured in an analogous way.

But the modern mind misses that in the organic and living unfolding of the world, wholes are generated by and out of other wholes, and the parts we observe are very often descended from the elaboration and internal differentiation of a whole whose existence precedes them.

Consider the embryonic development of a multicellular organism. It proceeds first by an existing whole (a “parent”) generating another whole (a “child”), then by the growth of that whole and concomitant internal differentiation into parts—sub-wholes that descend from and are synthesized by the whole.

The importance of this sequence can not be overstated: In living systems the whole generates the parts. The parts do not exist a priori. In each step of this process we can see that both wholes and parts come from existing wholes. They are not constructed in the usual sense—they are not manufactured. They are synthesized via an unbroken chain of wholes, extending back to the beginning.

This article first appeared in issue 1 of The Side View Journal. Purchase your own copy here. 

Robert Rosen recognized this as an essential feature of complex living systems, and further recognized the vast insufficiency of the Newtownian state-recursion paradigm in accounting for it. This insufficiency has not been widely recognized nor appreciated, never mind adequately addressed in the sciences.

Stuart Kauffman has voiced similar insights, pointing out that, for example, the function of an organ, like the heart, is not something that can be found in the heart by itself, but is a property that is inherited from its context: the whole organism in which it is embedded, and which has produced it.

We have projected our impoverished manufacturing model of the world onto the world and attempted to stuff ourselves inside of it. This is more than a theoretical problem. Our literal, built environment is full of parts, but is lacking wholes.

The architect Christopher Alexander has identified just such a manufacturing mindset and process as making it impossible to build places that feel alive, that don’t make us feel alien. We are lacking genuine, whole, places. We are at a crucial moment. We’ve broken many chains-of-wholes that we used to inhabit. Cultural wholes, economic wholes, architectural wholes, individual and family wholes. But it’s not too late, the past is still in sight, and there are still chains left unbroken.


The resolution to our political strife lies here as well. The unfolding wholes of the world are both conservative and progressive: Many of the structures that enable living processes and support the whole in which they are embedded must be carried forward in order to continue to produce harmonious and persistent wholes. And the processes of embellishment, elaboration, refactorization, and refinement of these wholes allow us to become something new, something we haven’t been before.

We are, all of us, conservative progressives.

If we should not manufacture our environment, then what role can we play as builders of it? The answer is that we must become stewards of the wholes we are able to perceive. The Gestalt psychologists’ profound insight was that our perception is grounded in wholes, and that the parts of perception are often results of “filling in” by virtue of the form of the whole.

We must embark on such a filling-in process when we build. But our perception cannot be artificially isolated to vision, audition, olfaction, and so on—we must perceive with our whole self, and we must perceive by interacting. For these wholes themselves are high-dimensional, complex, and living.

Beauty is the interface through which we can detect, refine, enhance, and extend living wholes. Aesthetic perception is simply our most integrated form of perception—necessarily transmodal and intuitive.

We must steward wholes, because we cannot conceive of them. Not in full, or anywhere close. And certainly we cannot conceive of the wholes that might become, that might evolve. Stuart Kauffman has argued powerfully that the patterns that evolution produces are unforeseeable in principle, that it might be impossible to predict the future—and he may be right.

So we must steward the wholes in which we embed ourselves, rather than manufacture them. We should serve as agents in their refinement, their further elaboration, their evolution—but we cannot construct complex wholes ex nihilo. Nothing good comes from the belief that we can.

We must be humble in our abilities. We must make sure we are perceiving wholes, and not imagining them. The range of scales over which our perception can operate—aesthetic or otherwise—is finite. The stewarding process is a local one, grounded in practice, and relatively uncorrupted by false abstractions.

We can and should take action to protect the wholes that exist at the largest scales—our planet, for instance—but we should not delude ourselves into believing we can sufficiently perceive or intentionally guide them. We will do more harm than good if we forget this.

We are all very used to thinking of wholes that are composed by putting the parts together, but we must develop the skill to perceive the wholes that exist and help them express their latent parts that have not yet come to be.