I came across this in an article on the editorial page of The Times of India (May 28, 2013):
"The sum of many publications (is) bigger than the sum of their parts."
It needs the reader to pause a while and unravel what the writers, Kaushik Murali and Saubhik Chakrabarti, meant to convey.
Obviously, it is a take off of the expression, ascribed to Aristotle, which is, "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts". A website, sum.com, explains it thus: "When you add together the parts, the total value will be larger than if you had counted up the individual components."
It is a holism, a doctrine that a system may have properties over and above those of its parts and their organisation. Like, for instance, a human body has a value higher than the value of each of the components that make up a human body.
But the "sum of many publications (is) bigger than the sum of their parts"? Not easy to take in. Not very comfortable for a reader, even if it were a correct expression.
"The sum of many publications (is) bigger than the sum of their parts."
It needs the reader to pause a while and unravel what the writers, Kaushik Murali and Saubhik Chakrabarti, meant to convey.
Obviously, it is a take off of the expression, ascribed to Aristotle, which is, "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts". A website, sum.com, explains it thus: "When you add together the parts, the total value will be larger than if you had counted up the individual components."
It is a holism, a doctrine that a system may have properties over and above those of its parts and their organisation. Like, for instance, a human body has a value higher than the value of each of the components that make up a human body.
But the "sum of many publications (is) bigger than the sum of their parts"? Not easy to take in. Not very comfortable for a reader, even if it were a correct expression.
