Nothing is greater than the sum of it's parts

Nothing is greater than the sum of it's parts

Systems are made up of many individual elements. Assuming you have perfect knowledge of these elements, you will have perfect knowledge of the system. If you can predict the actions of these elements, you can predict the actions of the system. There are two cases where this is not true. 

• Case 0: Cause and effect breaks down. In other words, magic. 
• Case 1: You have a name for a certain phenomenon/property at the system level but not at the individual level. This is not an emergent property, just a quirk of human reasoning. 
• Case 2: Abstraction. You cannot understand/process the interactions of the individual elements. You instead look at the system as a whole. When you see things that your flawed understanding of the individual elements does not account for, you attribute these attributes or actions to "the system" and believe that the system is a real thing. It isn't. It's an abstraction, a simplified mental model you use because you are unable to process//comprehend reality.