Ken Webb 2010-03-26T03:37:05Z
Reality is composed neither of things nor processes, neither wholes nor parts, but whole/parts, or holons -- all the way up, all the way down. (Wilber, A Brief History of Everything, p.21)
COMPOSITE Compose objects into tree structures to represent part-whole hierarchies. Composite lets clients treat individual objects and compositions of objects uniformly. (Gamma et al, Design Patterns, p.163) (Note: In the diagram of design pattern relationships on the inside back cover of the book, there are more connections between Composite and other patterns than for any other pattern. It has 8 connections, while the runner up Flyweight has 4 connections.)
The main relationships in MVC are given by the Observer, Composite, and Strategy design patterns. (Gamma et al, Design Patterns, p.6)
every individual act of building is a process in which space gets differentiated. It is not a process of addition, in which preformed parts are combined to create a whole, but a process of unfolding, like the evolution of an embryo, in which the whole precedes the parts, and actually gives birth to them, by splitting. (Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building, p.xiii)
a large part of the 'structure' of a building or town consists of patterns of relationships (Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building, p.87)
the shift from objects to relationships. According to Bateson, relationship should be the basis of all definition; biological form is put together of relations and not of parts (Capra, Uncommon Wisdom, p.80)
The concept of hierarchic order occupies a central place in this book, and lest the reader should think that I am riding a private hobby horse, let me reassure him that this concept has a long and respectable ancestry. So much so, that defenders of orthodoxy are inclined to dismiss it as 'old hat' - and often in the same breath to deny its validity. Yet I hope to show as we go along that this old hat, handled with some affection, can produce lively rabbits. (Koestler, 1967, The Ghost in the Machine, p. 45)