The Whole in the Part

A topic that threads itself into some of our conversations is the relationship between the ‘whole’ and its constituent ‘parts’ (even if these precise words are not used). Here is a certain whole, whether it is the society, the family, the nation, or the world, on the one hand, and here are its parts, members, as we say, of the former. What sort of a relationship holds (or should hold) between the former and the latter? Shall we say that the former comes ‘before’ the parts?

A note on this question. When we say that A is ‘before’ B, the word ‘before’ can mean different things in different contexts. So if John finished ahead of David in a bicycle race, we say that John arrived ‘before’ David at the final destination. This is the temporal sense of the term. But there is another, somewhat more intriguing, logical sense. Does the number 1 come before the number 2? Well, in one sense, yes. If you mark the natural numbers on a straight line starting from the point marked zero (where you are placed), the number 1 will be closer to you and the number 2 farther away. Also, a child in primary school would usually be taught the first before the second. But we do not really imagine that before she is introduced to the latter, it does not exist. These two numbers co-exist at the same time, but the former is logically prior to the latter, in the sense that the meaning of the latter can be explicated only the basis of an understanding of the former. Here is another example. Suppose we hear someone refer to a ‘red capybara’. Though we may not know what a capybara is, we can at least presume that it is a red-coloured object. In contrast, consider the phrase ‘capybara red’: unless this is a poetic locution, we would not quite know what sense to make of it. We can explain this distinction by saying that an object is logically prior to its qualities. When we see a ‘red apple’ we see the apple and its redness simultaneously, but the apple is logically prior in that the quality of ‘redness’ cannot be a freely-floating entity haging over it. On the other hand, the apple did not have to be red, it could have green or some other colour.

In certain wholes likewise, the totality is logically prior to its parts. Consider a fully-grown tree, its branches, shoots, leaves, trunk and roots. Which came first, the former or the latter? There is no ‘whole tree’ which is distinct from these constituents and stands over and above them, the ‘whole tree’ is in the latter. If we pluck out some leaves from this totality, what we have is not really a part, because the leaves will shrivel up and cease to exist. In contrast, consider bits and pieces of finely carved wood. A carpenter shapes and moulds them into a chair. In this case, however, we can say that the whole came after its parts. Initially, you had only these parts, and these parts were fashioned into a whole which gradually emerged from them. Morever, they retain their distinctiveness in the whole. For if you were to dismantle the chair, its individual bits would not go out of existence (unlike the leaves in the previous case).

We note, then, a central distinction between these two types of totality. In one, the whole is integrally or, as we sometimes say, organically connected with its parts. So intimate is this union that we can distinguish between the whole and the parts only in thought, but never in reality. It does not make much sense to speak of a ‘leaf’ in abstraction, a leaf can only be a leaf of a tree; likewise for its roots and shoots.

In the other, the whole is mechanically built out of fragments which are the parts, so that there is a temporal gap between the former and the latter. Also, even if one of the part is detached from the whole, it retains its original qualities. The armchair broken off from a chair remains a piece of wood; it does not disintegrate into nothingness. There is a popular way of putting this distinction: the whole is ‘larger’ than the parts, in one case and the whole is ‘nothing but’ the parts, in the other.

Both these examples are drawn from the inanimate and the non-human animate worlds. What happens, however, when we seek to apply these considerations to human social existence? For example, which kind of a totality is society or the family? Is it a totality like a tree which dwells in its parts, or is it one like a chair which can be dismantled into its parts? Is there one life that flows through and pervades all its levels and strata?

Responses will vary from one individual to another; depending on various factors such as age, class, race, affluence, gender and so on. For instance, some groups may feel that they are deeply integrated into the social whole, but could fail to see that many others, who have been cast to the social periphery, experience this whole not as a benign but as a malign force. Whether it is the helots, the slaves, the proletariat or the untouchables, the story is broadly the same in its outline. It is not uncommon for the powerful to try to legitimise their sectional interests by putting forward their views as being in the best interests of all (whereas under ‘all’ they should properly include only themselves).

This is to point out that this question, ‘what type of a social formation do we aspire towards?’, is integrally connected to our understanding of a social whole. Is it one that is structured by relations of domination and oppression or is one that is truly accomodating of divergent forces, interests and opinions? At times, it is hard to discriminate between the two; which is perhaps why the question of whether social existence is a boon or a bane continues to be such a hotly debated topic.