Towards a Theory of Part

My aim in this paper is to outline a general framework for dealing with questions of part-whole. My approach is very different from the more conventional approaches to the subject. For instead of dealing with the single notion of mereological part or sum, I have attempted to provide a comprehensive and unified account of the different ways in which one object can be a part of another. Thus mereology, as it is usually conceived, will become a relatively small aspect of a much larger subject. 1 My discussion has been intentionally restricted in a number of ways. In the first place, my principal concern has been with the notion of absolute rather than relative part. We may talk of one object being a part of another relative to a time or possible world (as when we say that the tire was once a part of the car or that or that the execution of Marie Antoinette was a part of the French Revolution) or in a way that is not relative to time or possible world (as when we say that this pint of milk is a part of the quart or that the letter'c' is part of the word 'cat'). Many philosophers have supposed that the two notions are broadly analogous and that what goes for one will tend to go for the other. 2 I believe this view to be mistaken and a source of endless error. But it is not my aim to discuss either the notion of relative part or its connection with the absolute notion. 3 In the second place, I have focused on the 'pure' theory of part-whole rather than its application to our actual ontology. Once given a theory of part-whole, there arises the question of how it applies to the objects with which we are already familiar; and although a large element of the interest and justification of the theory derives from its applications, my concern has been more with the abstract development of the theory itself. Finally, I have only provided the merest sketch of the framework (on which I hope say more elsewhere). Many points are not developed and some not even stated. I have, in particular, said relatively little about the technical foundations of the subject, which are mathematically 1The material outlined in this paper has been developed over a period of close to thirty years. I have presented …