Wholes precede parts

In semiosis, as in biology, wholes precede parts; similarity precedes difference. Thoughts and lives both begin as wholes – albeit ones that can be extremely vague and underspecified. A single-celled embryo, however simple and undifferentiated, is just as whole as the multicellular organism into which it will develop. An icon, however rudimentary its likeness, insofar as it is taken as a likeness, imperfectly captures the object of its similarity as a whole. It is only in the realm of the machine that the differentiated part comes first and the assembled whole second. Semiosis and life, by contrast, begin whole.

Eduardo Kohn, How Forests Think (University of California Press, 2013) p.64