Why do we need the notion of wholeness, unity or one-ness?

When I come home from a journey abroad, the days that follow tend be sprinkled with occasional stories about that journey, things I have seen, heard, tasted, felt or witnessed. Each of these events is wrapped in its own narrative making the seeing, hearing, tasting or witnessing, a unified event differentiated from the continuity of my day. Apparently, I unify my separated experiences into small narratives. Why do I do this?

I could try to give a psychological explanation. Such an explanation would probably end up having the form of proposing ‘an urge’ or ‘an instinct’, a ‘hard-wired response’ or something similar. Perhaps we do have such urges or instincts but I suspect we only have such urges, if urges they are, because of a prior requirement, which is a necessary consequence of our ability to differentiate ‘things’ within the continuity that is the behaviour of the universe.

To test this theory with a counterfactual, imagine if we did not to make stories with a certain internal coherence and consistency of our experiences. How would we express to ourselves, never mind convey convey to others, our separate experiences? How could we make a visit to a museum intelligible as a distinct event? Try as I might, I find myself silenced at each attempt. Either I have to tell the story of my whole life every time, (which, however cumbersome, would still count as a way of making a whole of something, so that doesn’t work), or I have to just spout out a stream of consciousness and hope the people will listen to the right bits and put them together themselves (oops, I have done it again), or I throw out incomprehensible fragments: sounds without sentences, because as soon as I do anything else, I am already reaching for that unifying movement that seeks relevance and selects facts and figures to form a composition, that is, an intentional positioning of elements that inevitably, ineluctably and necessarily make a whole of some sort, a unified whole of disparate parts.

Not that this makes my stories good narratives. My wife could get bored, or confused in the way I tell them and beg me to stop. But it is essential to remind ourselves that the analytical question, ‘what counts as doing something?’ is not the same as the critical question, ‘what counts as doing it well?’ A whole can be dissatisfying, without ceasing to be counted as a whole.

It would appear that conceptualization has within it a mereological necessity: Conceptualization just is the production of wholes that are themselves made up of parts and that can themselves become parts in greater wholes.

We round off everything we conceive as wholes. Is this an urge? Or, is it something that conceptualization must do in order to count as conceptualization? If we look at the conceptualizing activities of mathematics, we might see how this differentiation and unification process works. The conceptual world of mathematics is a world that is, conceptually at least, infinitely divisible into units, that by virtue of their being units, count as wholes that can form part of greater wholes or be divided into parts that then themselves behave as wholes. And this allows us to model the behaviour of the world we observe at every scale accessible to our microscopes and telescopes with an extraordinary accuracy.

For what it’s worth then, here is my thesis: The act of conceptual unification is a necessary consequence of any act of conceptual differentiation and vice versa. We say that ‘this is this and not that’. That act by itself is simultaneously an act of differentiation and unification.

Analysis is the activity whereby we break the world we perceive into conceptions of it. In conceptually differentiating the behaviour of the universe into diverse things on the basis of their mode of existence, we necessarily make bodies of the things differentiated, that is, we give them status as a thing, a wholeness unified and perhaps we even give them a name. Proper names for unique things and universals for things we can order into sorts of things. Both of them we subsequently dress in an array of conceptualized properties that pertain to the thing even though they come about through interaction with their environment and our perceptual/conceptual cognitive apparatus. If a whole breaks up into parts, each part becomes a whole, a thing constructed conceptually as that thing.

Within the discipline of mereology the discussion concerns the point at which we can truly speak of a whole.

Some scholars have trouble seeing certain things as ‘proper’ wholes, such as a heap of sand, never mind a heap of disparate things like rubbish. For them a whole has to be something special. This is a position held by both Aristotle and Kathrin Koslicki, to me the two greatest Mereologists.¹ Koslicki uses a modified account of Rescher and Oppenheim who argue that a whole derives its unity from three main characteristics:

To my mind a heap of sand and a heap of rubbish still count as wholes on this basis. A heap of sand can be characterized; it is more than the sum of its parts: a grain does not a heap make. And the parts interact because of their properties, such that their shape, weight, colour, their crystalline composition, the way they maintain their individuality as grains even when rubbing against each other under some pressure, work together as a team to allow us to characterize the heap of sand as such and identify it against almost any background. All this is, in its own very different way, true for a heap of rubbish.

If we then ask the question is there a categorical difference between say a heap of sand and a working motorbike, we could in fact say no. The difference is is not categorical, unless we can find yet further criteria against which we could judge that difference.

Perhaps then, we need to return to the source of all mereology, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book Iota (Book X) In this book Aristotle discusses the different ways in which unity (τὸ ἕν) can be said (or, to use a more technical term) predicated of things.

If we may summarize his position then one might say that unity is that which is indivisible, either quantitively, by form or by definition. A unity must, according to Aristotle, be one essentially and not by accident. How that works is that the essence of unity is indivisibility. As such unity is always a continuity in motion and it must be so naturally. What an unnatural continuous motion would look like is unclear. I can personally not identify anything in our world that stands outside nature to do something that is not natural, but that is because I am careful not to make the mistake to think that human beings are not natural creatures doing what their nature allows them to do.

To continue with our summary, a whole has a shape such that it is not what is outside that shape. Also, (and this might get most things into trouble) unity is that of which the underlying material is one, either in number, form or species. Although unity is a continuity it can be achieved through contact or contiguity which means that some forms of unity can be achieved through combination. That last requirement is a relief, otherwise it might have been impossible to feel at one with the universe, or with your partner, pet goldfish, frying pan, or whatever you want to feel one with.

Not just heaps of sand and rubbish will have trouble complying with all of these exacting terms. We can say that a heap of rubbish is one quantitatively. That one is easy. It has a definition: I can sensibly complete the sentence ‘a heap of rubbish is…’ and give it a short pithy description that would allow others to identify heaps of sand. If the essence of a heap of rubbish is its indivisibility it might fail the test as any heap can be divided to make two smaller heaps. Only the smallest heap, when divided, stops being a heap and becomes… what? A collection, a scattering, a sprinkling?

But indivisibility is also a problem for things we would urgently want to see as one. My body is one, it fits the notion of a shape such that I am not whatever is outside of my shape. But, quite a few of its bits could be chopped off or extracted before I cease to be me. Having said that, it is true that with every chop my definition of myself would change. I would start off as ‘Jacob’ and then become ‘Jacob who is missing a finger’, and so on until a witness would have to conclude that whatever he is looking at is no longer Jacob at which moment I would have ceased to exist as Jacob but become something else, whilst my bits had already preceded me on that journey.

A heap of sand too, is a continuity in motion and shape. A heap of sand is one in terms of its underlying material and this by way of a slight of hand can also be said of a pile of rubbish, which is after all, made up of rubbish. But does rubbish count as a material? It is not a homogeneous material, but then neither is CO₂ , which is after all a comnination of two elements, which are combinations of proptones, neutron electrons and whatnot. Can I then unify the material I am made of as ‘viscera’ or as ‘organic’?

If unity is allowed through contact or contiguity, I can call quite a few things that ‘come together’ for any occasion, a unity, such as an umbrella and a sewing machine meeting on a dissection table. There is a cohesive narrative that I could devise to make this coming together count as a whole.

A number of problems left by the Aristotelians (including Koslicky) are further resolved by Hegel. Hegel defines unity/wholeness as:

• A self-developing totality (“the True is the whole”)
• The integration of difference into identity (“unity… contains negativity”)
• Concrete rather than abstract unity (“unity of distinct determinations”)
• A circular self-movement (“the circle that presupposes its end as its beginning”)

“The True is the whole.”² A short sentence, but to seek out its implications is an involved affair. What we can say is that a universe such as defined by Spinoza, is fully whole, one and true. Any distinction or separation reduces it, so that its wholeness, one-ness and truth are compromised in favour of conceptual grasp and control. This requires differentiation. That is where Hegel demands that the recipe for making a unified whole includes negation. He sees unity as self-mediated identity. It is an identity that includes difference within itself. “Identity is the identity of identity and difference.”³ and again, “Unity is the self-relation which contains negativity; it is the return of the other into itself.”⁴

How to understand this? It means that unity is an active process, a constant activity of unification: it becomes itself only by engaging with what is different from it, from which it absorbs stuff to maintain itself in its difference. (I breathe air, drink water, eat apples all all this must again be excreted. I am a continuous metabolism. This also accounts for only the whole being the true. My metabolism blurs my exitence into the existence of what I am not by maintaining myself. A self is an act of unification that goes through an incredibly complex ricocheting whereby the self shapes itself through its conception of the other as not being itself. One aspect of growing up is to learn to cope with one’s shape and movement so as to know what is and what is not one’s body. We need to be able to conceive of nothingness to differentiate the world into parts we call things. This is something that Sartre beautifully worked on in his L’être et le néant, essai d’ontologie phénoménologique, (1946) Negation is a purely conceptual notion that has no other mode of existence, but it helps us make space, (Sartre) a clearing (Heidegger), an interval so that we can look back at ourselves reflectively and shape ourselves in that gap.

Actually, negation was already demanded by Aristotle who speaks of a whole as having ‘a shape such that it is not what is outside that shape.’ In other words a thing is, by also not being something else. What Hegel later adds to this, on the inspiration of his friend Hölderlin, is that identity is not just about differentiating oneself from the other it is about constructing oneself through engagement with the other. To be this is to not be that (Aristotle). To be is to become through what one isn’t (Hegel). Indeed Hölderlin’s madness apparently manifested itself very early on as a feeling of being one with things, a kind of psychotic expression that Vincent van Gogh and Nietzsche suffered from and which is beautifully described by Virginia Woolf in her Mrs. Dalloway.

So what about that universe? Is the universe then something that only is, something that is not subject to negation, that does not hold to its shape outside of which it is not? Spinoza got round this problem by saying that the universe is of one substance with an infinite number of attributes. Which means that the universe is a thing in which everything can in principle affect everything else within it, because it is of one substance, which ‘is in itself and is conceived through itself’⁵

However, Spinoza allows room for an infinite number of substances (read universes) to exist, but they are so isolated from each other in that they cannot in any way affect each other so that other universes are not thinkable except as possible under the conditions just mentioned which factually makes them possible but unthinkable, they cannot be described, cannot be imagined without drawing them into our universe. And should such another universe be found that can affect ours, well then we are perfectly within our rights to questions whether it is a separate universe and whether it should not just be counted as one with our own.

The above accords with Nietzsche’s early attempt at grasping the problem of oneness and conceptualization by making a distinction between the Dionysian and the Apollonian, whereby the first affirms life in its entirety, including its suffering and horror, rather than denying it. The Dionysian is a “celebration of life, even at its most terrible,” indicating a “superabundance of life whilst the second allows us to order our understanding by creating illusions. The ordering of our mind entails a falsification of the reality we are trying to grasp.

“Under the charm of the Dionysian, not only is the union between man and man reaffirmed, but nature, which has become alienated or subjugated, celebrates once more her reconciliation with her prodigal son, man”⁶ and again in the same paragraph: “In the Dionysian state… there is complete self-forgetfulness. The individual… becomes one with the primal unity.” “The Dionysian rouses the artistic power of nature within us… the breaking down of the principium individuationis, during which the subjective fades into complete self-oblivion.”⁷

However this relates to Hegel, the latter was at least at pains to show how complex it is to reason oneself to a complete or absolute understanding of the world, which he, like Spinoza conceived of as a whole. Hegel knew that the attainment of the absolute was probably not possible, although he was confident to have felt he had made considerable headway.

At the same time, we cannot see this whole as a static thing, it is a developing whole, a natura naturans as Spinoza called it, echoing Heraclitus and prefiguring both Hegel and later Whitehead in his process view of things. “The True is the whole.”But now let’s complete the quotation: “But the whole is nothing other than the essence consummating itself through its development.”⁸ So the true whole is the universe, which unfolds itself through the working through its possibilities.“ or what Bohm conceives of as the implicate order and Deleuze describes in his theories of becoming and territorialization. The True is the whole, and the whole is only the essence that completes itself by its own activity.”⁹

Hegel also differentiates between an abstract unity, the unity that unifies things under the sets of universals by stripping away at differences. In this way all pets are the same because they are all animals. It is a unity achieved through omission. A concrete unity contains differences within itself and depends upon those differences. A family and its household form such a unity in that the unity depends upon the different roles played by each constituent element within such a family household: mum, dad, the washing machine. “The true unity is concrete, and consists in the unity of distinct determinations.”¹⁰ It is really what Koslicky refers to as things that work together like a team. And of course if you then extend how everything works together to make a motorbike possible, you realize that that possibility is premised on the completeness of the whole universe. Indeed, Hegel’s last criterion for wholeness refers back to the only true whole, the absolute: “The absolute is the process of its own becoming, the circle that presupposes its end as its beginning and thereby is actual.”¹¹

When all is said and done, oneness can be allowed all things that can be conceived as something that deserves an indefinite or definite article in the noun form, or something that can be defined as subject when performing something that can be given a verb. Indeed the indivisibility of things that can be called one is contained in the fact that when one divides anything it changes. A heap of sand divided into two heaps makes each heap a smaller one. (Pun intended)

To call the universe one is a heroic deed. After all, the universe in its differentiated state ‘comes natural’ to us. Which is why we have a hard time conceiving of the universe as a single whole of continuous behaviour. And even when we put in the hard work we do so only speculatively, because really, “We do not know what the universe is” (Borges) and its oneness is conceptually prepared in a definition (In my case Spinoza’s definition) that can never be verified. Our senses connected to our cognitive apparatus ‘see’ colours. ‘hear’ sounds and so forth. Because of the way our cognition engages with the outside ‘difference’ comes natural. But it is not true to say that thereby oneness is unnatural. In differentiating we differentiate things into separate bodies that thereby achieve a status as whole. These wholes must be able to work together to form greater wholes (states of affairs) or be further broken down into working parts.

Can we conceptualize the making of wholes as a kind of recipe with necessary ingredients and perhaps even a necessary sequence of their processing?

I think all that is required is for us to turn Koslicky’s criteria and or those of Aristotle and Hegel into commands. And so our conceptualizations of everything become performative actions, whereby the act of conception is an act of division and unification.

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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 ↩︎
2. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface. ↩︎
3. Hegel, Science of Logic, Doctrine of Essence ↩︎
4. Hegel, Science of Logic, Doctrine of Being, Quality ↩︎
5. Per substantiam intelligo id quod in se est et per se concipitur.” (Ethics I, def.3) ↩︎
6. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, § 1 ↩︎
7. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, § 2 ↩︎
8. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface ↩︎
9. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface ↩︎
10. Hegel, Encyclopedia Logic §160 Remark ↩︎
11. Hegel, Science of Logic, Doctrine of Being ↩︎