Eric writes > Is the claim that the whole is greater than the parts really > necessary for a structuralist perspective? Is this claim just > the relic of some past attempt to defuse counterattacks > from methodological individualists? Does this claim implicit > recognize the claims of meth-ins? > Like everybody else I'm just groping here as well. It is only Eric's questions which have recently prompted this train of thought. Suppose we grant that on some level anyway the whole is not more than the sum of its parts. How do we avoid a reductionist explanation, that is reducing the explanation of the whole to the aggregation of the explained parts? It strikes me that recent discussions within the hard sciences of the problem of reductionism can throw some light on this question. The argument here if I understand it correctly is that the interaction of basic elements produces complex systems. These systems while composed of the constituent parts manifest properties which are not predictable from a knowledge of the properties of the parts or are not usefully described solely in terms of the properties of the constituent parts. Thus the increasing sophistication of particle physics does not obviate the need for a separate science of chemistry. The most intuitive example is perhaps life. While nothing life 'does' violates the rules of chemistry, life exhibits properties which demand the elaboration of the science of biology to explain them. Thus life is composed of chemical interactions, but most of these chemical interactions are irrelevant to the understanding of much of evolution for instance. Nor would the understanding of chemistry predict the existence of evolution. Thus while the whole is not physically more than its constituent parts, its dynamic behaviour cannot be explained in terms of the constituent parts or even in terms of a dialectic between the whole and the parts. Indeed the intersection of the whole (a life form) with the parts (chemical interactions) throws up an intermediate science of biochemistry. But life is not reducible to biochemistry either and biology remains a separate science. It seems to me it might be fruitful to look at the agency structure problem which Eric poses in an analogous way. Social structures are not in any mystical sense more than the sum of the human interactions that compose them. Nevertheless social structures like life are an emergent phenomena. They are composed of individual human interactions but the explanation of their dynamic and development cannot be reduced to an understanding of individual human interactions. As complex phenomena they manifest their own emergent properties which differ from the properties of the constituent parts. Structures can be explained in terms of their own emergent properties without reference (or much reference) to the properties of the constituent parts. Nobody thinks you need to refer to partical physics to explain evolution even though life the universe and everything is composed of elementary particles. One can imagine a science which seeks to understand the intersection between the individual (psychology) and history (historical materialism) but the insights of such a science would not necessarily alter the basic understandings of its two flanking sciences (though it might). Virtually thinking out loud. Terry McDonough
