The Whole and the Parts

Which is the truest way of seeing the universe?

As a whole, wherein everything is interwoven together and nothing can truly be understood unless everything is understood? Abstraction being a kind of useful fiction-writing and all contemplation of anything apart from everything is the study of a shadow.

Or as a collection of simple parts which can be individually understood and whose relations to one another can be understood, the totality of these simple parts and relations being what we call "everything." Abstraction allowing us to grasp the atoms that make up what we happen to call totality.