Reductionism and Whole/Parts

In my previous post, I proposed a three-level model of intelligence: Life, Psychology, and Intelligence, which is based on the theories of far from equilibrium which again could be based on quantum theories. So total 5-level models, including life and non-life. This article explains some philosophical reasoning behind this model.

These models sounds like reductionism, but not exactly.

Let's first consider the phrase "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts", which has been talked by many, many people and many, many times.

In reality, the highly abstracted "whole" could be much less than the sum of its parts, if people ignore too many details and don't have enough knowledge of parts.

So "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" is only true when you have the enough knowledge of parts. Usually it is not the case. People should be aware of the constraints of those sayings which sounds correct.

However, in practice, many people still follow such type of thinking, not exactly, but actually in a loosed form, consciously or not consciously, "the whole could provide additional information to the sum of its parts". Here the constraint of "enough knowledge of parts" is removed. But pay attention to "could". You take the risk for your own by following this thinking. It only COULD be true.

The constraint tells us, people need pay attention to the details of parts, especially when things are not done well. By coming back to fundamentals, people could enrich their understanding, adjust their approaches. 

However, only low-level details are not good enough. By the loosed version of  "the whole could provide additional information to the sum of its parts", people could establish high-level principles, which may be not obvious in low-level regular phenomina, to understand the whole better. Brussels-Austin approach could gain hints from the studies of life, psychology and intelligence, to push their researches further. 

So although "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" is not always true, this three-level model of intelligence is not pure reductionism.