"The philosophical moral is clear. Composition, though essential, is not everything: structure and mechanism are equally important (see Bunge 2003a ...). Hence compositionism, or naive reductionism, or methodological individualism, is simplistic. In other words, analysis or decomposition, is always necessary but never sufficient to understand wholes. We must also find out the bonds that keep the parts together and explain the emergence of global properties - for instance, the hydrogen bonds among the molecules of a water body, and the psychological and economic bonds among the members of a business firm. Besides, we must place the thing of interest in its context instead of treating it as a solitary individual. For instance, atoms in the center of the Earth lose their outer electrons; neurons behave differently in different neuronal networks; and tyrannical bosses may behave tamely and lovingly at home.

The methodological lesson is that we should supplement every bottom-up analysis with a top-down analysis, because the whole constrains the parts ... The methodological counterpart is that the atomistic program of explaining the whole by its parts fails every time the behavior of the parts is strongly influenced by its position in the whole."

Slots and Values
ref	p73-4
source	Unnamed