Talk:Part–whole theory

Notability
The article does not cite any sources, so it cannot be verified whether the subject is notable (or maybe is rather original research). Please add relevant references, preferably to peer-reviewed scientific publications. Google shows a number of hits for "part-whole", but this being such a general term (and me not being an expert in philosophy), I cannot judge whether they are even vaguely related with the article. -- Sorted as part of the Notability Wikiproject. --B. Wolterding 15:42, 19 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Are you happier now? Grattan-Guiness (2000) is the authority on unwitting part-whole reasoning in 19th century mathematics before Zermelo and Principia. Even so, it is hard for me to get a clear handle on this confused situation. According to GG, a classic instance of a fellow whose thinking was part-whole through and through was Ernst Schroeder.
 * Husserl's Second Logical Investigation fascinates, but the secondary literature explicating its part-whole theory seems very sparse. An otherwise fine recent collection of essays on Husserl the philosopher of mathematics, by Hill and Rosado Haddock, says nothing about part-while and the Logical Investigations.
 * Can mathematics be grounded in part-whole rather than set theory? Husserl never touched on this. Lesniewski thought so, but did not work out the details. In a 1947 JSL article, Goodman and Quine tried hard to develop the natural and real numbers in Goodman's calculus of individuals, but were mostly unsuccessful (Quine did not include that article in his Selected Logic Papers). The only person I know of who believed that much or all of mathematics could be grounded in some form of mereology was R M Martin, in a series of papers he wrote in the last 15 years of his life and included in his later books. A rare set theorist to comment on mereology is Michael Potter, in his 2004 monograph.Palnot (talk) 08:19, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
 * The article seems much better now. Thanks a lot. --B. Wolterding (talk) 09:48, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Hegel
Hegel had written on whole and part and the relationship between whole and part. This needs to be covered. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.124.230.149 (talk) 06:48, 17 February 2010 (UTC)