Forms of Aggregativity

Abstract

At least since Plato and Aristotle, philosophers and biologists have puzzled over the differences between systems which are mere “aggregates” of their parts (such as a heap of stones) and systems which are “complex organized wholes” (such as biological organisms). The rallying cry for many of these differences has been the aphorism that “an organism is more than the sum of its parts” — whereas a heap of stones, presumably, is “nothing more” than the “sum” of its parts.