Re: Whole and Parts (and boundaries)
Azamat,
The following statement is a mathematical abstraction.
It is not physics, it is not biology, and it is not
a "common sense" view of any practical application in
engineering, politics, or geography:
> So there are at least two wholes which terminal parts
> (or extremities) are either contiguous, in contact,
> in succession, or continuous with one another.
> And one of the entity is bounded by another.
Mathematics is a very important subject. If you want
to do mathematics, that's an honorable thing to do.
But it's not ontology, and it's not "common sense".
Although I like mereology, topology, and their combination
in mereotopology, I would be extremely cautious about
making any claims about their relevance to any application
without a great deal of experimental evidence and testing
of claims.
> For illustration, take the physical objects marked by
> spatiotemporal discontinuities....
That oversimplification is typical of armchair philosophers
who spend too much time inside buildings constructed by
other people and filled with artifacts designed by people
for very specific purposes. I suggest that you take a
walk in the woods and try to count "the physical objects
marked by spatiotemporal discontinuities." Try to
determine the spatiotemporal discontinuities that mark
leaves from twigs, twigs from branches, branches from
trunks, trunks from roots, and roots from soil. Consider
aspen trees, where a large hillside may be covered by
what looks like a forest, but is actually a single
organism with a single root system and multiple stems
that on the surface look like separate trees.
> As for the issue of Vagueness, which is not really a big
> issue when you use it in the sense 'obscure': something
> not clearly comprehended, expressed, without clarity and
> distinction. Other thing when you mean something which is
> undetermined, unspecified, undefinable like our many senses,
> feelings and concepts. Here you have the point. But again
> we need to find the boundary which limits or defines the
> vague and undefined terms, senses or concepts so that
> to make them crystal clear and understandable.
Some questions about the last sentence:
1. Who is the "we" you are speaking about?
2. What "need" are you talking about? When I walk
in the woods, I don't feel any "need" to distinguish
separate organisms or to find boundaries. I just
enjoy the experience.
3. Why do you feel that concepts must be made "crystal
clear and understandable"? For what purpose?
I'd like to quote another observation by Whitehead:
Human knowledge is a process of approximation. In the
focus of experience, there is comparative clarity.
But the discrimination of this clarity leads into the
penumbral background. There are always questions left
over. The problem is to discriminate exactly what we
know vaguely.
Essays in Science and Philosophy
As Whitehead says, clarity is the result of approximating
and abstracting. Nature is more complex than we can
possibly comprehend. Trying to make nature "crystal clear
and understandable" does not make it more true; instead,
it falsifies nature by forcing it to conform to our tiny
little concepts.
John Sowa