Generating Wholes

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 wh

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: th