7. Dialectical logic: part and whole

Thought is inherently about generalisation and universals. It takes us beyond the immediacy of the here and now, linking things and their characteristics together to develop useful categories.

This contradiction – between part and whole; individual and type – is at the heart of philosophy’s deepest problems. The need to grasp reality as a complex whole, instead of as atomised, self-contained parts, is likewise one of the deepest problems for science.