Theory of Wholeness (centers and life)

Entities in the same semantic neighborhood but without a typed relation to this one — candidates for new edges or unrecognized duplicates.

• Life comes from the wholeness, from the system of centers.quote0.822
  Summarizes the central thesis of the chapter.
• Wholeness as Nested System of Centersframework0.809
  Alexander's quasi-mathematical definition of wholeness as a recursively nested system of living centers displaying local symmetries, approximating the overall gestalt of a configuration
• Centers themselves have life.claim0.805
  One of the four key ideas, asserting that individual centers possess a degree of life.
• The wholeness and field of centers are not merely cognitive artifacts but are linked to the functional behavior of the natural world and are at the foundation of physics and biology.claim0.805
  Counters the skeptical cognitive interpretation by asserting the objective reality of centers in nature.
• Centers are above all, labile, they are foci of wholeness, they are not things, but regions, qualities, focal points of centeredness.quote0.802
  Key definition capturing the non-atomic, relational nature of centers as fields rather than objects.
• The degree of life of each center is correlated with the degree to which that center is a picture of the self, and this holds for all people, not just individuals.claim0.801
  Proposition 2 of the Mid-Book Appendix; the claim that self-likeness is a universal, species-wide measure of life.
• The life of a center is a phenomenon in which the center, like a window, makes contact with the plenum of absolute unity.claim0.795
  The definition of life in a center as contact with the absolute unity via tunneling.
• Centers within a whole intensify each other, resulting in a profound and lively whole.claim0.793
  Alexander's core mechanism explaining how the Fifteen Properties function to create living wholes.