Also known as “global and partial”. A widely used pair of categories of dialectics. The whole refers to the organic unity of several objects (or several components of a single object) in accordance with a certain structural form; the part refers to the individual objects in relation to such a whole. The existence of the whole and the parts mutually condition each other. The whole is constituted by the parts, without the parts there would be no whole; the whole conditions the parts, without the whole there would be no parts. The whole and the parts can transform into each other under certain conditions. Under certain conditions, a part of the whole is separated from the original whole and becomes an independent whole, and in all kinds of dissolution, differentiation, separation, and disintegration of things, there is a process of transformation of a part into the whole; the whole becomes one of the parts in a larger whole, and all kinds of fusion, merger, and integration include the process of transformation of the whole into a part. The function of the whole is not necessarily equal to the sum of the functions of its parts. Aristotle once put forth the famous proposition that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. The relation between the function of the whole and the sum of the functions of the parts depends on the concrete situation. The whole can have functions that the parts do not have at all. The function of the whole may be greater than the sum of the functions of the parts, or it may be shorter than the sum of the functions of the parts.
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