Disciplines
Philosophy, Ethics, Religion (50%); Psychology (25%); Linguistics and Literature (25%)
Keywords
Gestalt,
Ontology,
Part,
Whole,
Philosophy,
Metonymy
Abstract
The nature of structures comprising part-whole relations belongs to the oldest, most
fundamental and still discussed questions of philosophy. Unlike many former approaches,
which either give priority to the parts or to the whole of such structures, the present book is an
ontological, psychological, and cognitive-linguistic investigation that suggests an alternative
to a hierarchical conception of parts and whole with a one-sided dependency relation. This
alternative is called part-whole oscillation and is developed on a formal as well as empirical
basis.