Parts, Wholes, and Part-Whole Relations: The Prospects of Mereotopology

This is a brief overview of formal theories concerned with the study of the notions of (and the relations between) parts and wholes. The guiding idea is that we can distinguish between a theory of parthood (mereology) and a theory of wholeness (holology, which is essentially afforded by topology), and the main question examined is how these two theories can be combined to obtain a unified theory of parts and whole