VII. The Parts become the Whole…
Principles of the whole.
THE PARTS BECOME THE WHOLE as one acquires an understanding of everything. The whole is nothing more than a composition of its parts, and the parts are nothing more than elements of the whole. Without a beginning there could be no end; without an end is there a beginning?
So it is, as with all things, this book now must end. And as in winter, this book will reflect upon that which has already been said. Now that all of the essential components for understanding the world in its entirety at a general level have been introduced, this chapter will try to unite them, and to explore several principles concerning these elements that will help maximize one's understanding of them-and, subsequently, of everything.
In learning or perfecting anything, it is the fundamentals that teachers and coaches always return to in teaching their students. It is the ground floor from which one enters and exits a skyscraper. It is addition and subtraction that are returned to in mathematics when one is doing differential equations. The fundamentals make up the complex. The complex, therefore, follows the way of the fundamentals.
In congruence with the point of the last chapter, everything should be looked upon skeptically, for many contradictions exist within generalities. But for entities of our infinitely minute size, the world exists as one large, inconceivable generality and contradiction, for every point has its counterpoint. As Walt Whitman said:
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then . . . I contradict myself,
I am large . . . I contain multitudes.
But generalities or fundamentals are valuable in the sense that they are similar across disciplines, whereas the specifics are often very different. Many specifics are so complex as to be u