§ 02 Analysis, the activity of objectification

Analysis comes from the ancient Greek ἀνάλυσις (análusis), from (analuein, ‘unloose’). The prefix ‘ana’ means ‘up’, and ‘lusis’ means ‘loosening’, ‘release’ or ‘separation’, so that ‘analusis’ means ‘loosening up’ or ‘dissolution’.

In its simplest form, the activity of analysis will here stand for the objectifying moves in thought, trying to understand the world of which we are a working part.

The purpose of this activity is specifically mereological, that is, it intends to arrive at a description of the world in terms of wholes made up of parts and a description of the working relationship between those ‘teams’ of parts needed to make a whole. To understand what this entails, it will be useful to have a clear grasp of what a whole and a part are. I shall use Kathrin Koslicki’s modified account of Rescher and Oppenheim, who argue that a whole derives its unity from three main characteristics:
The whole must possess some attribute in virtue of its status as a whole that is peculiar to it. In other words, a whole must be more than the sum of its parts.

The way the parts of a whole interact with other parts must allow both the whole and its parts to manifest those of their capacities that require ‘teamwork’ among the parts. In other words, a whole is made up of working parts that work together. The whole must possess some structure that characterises it.¹

We will know that we have done analysis well if our descriptions help us make accurate predictive statements about the world’s behaviour. If we are successful analysts, our statements will have ‘truth value’: that is, they will be judged to have modelled the way the world behaves accurately, so that our propositions using the model we have made are useful.

© Jacob Voorthuis, 2026. Please cite Jacob Voorthuis as the author, The Theoria Project as the title and the page address as the location. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format. Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, under the following terms: No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits. Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.

1. Kathrin Koslicki, Form Matter, Substance (Oxford 2018) Chapter 7, esp. 197-8; See also Nicholas Rescher and Paul Oppenheim, “The Logical Analysis of Gestalt Concepts,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 6, No. 22 (August 1955), pp. 89-106 ↩︎