1) SEPARATE ELEMENTS OF REALITY: Classically, we have been concerned with the properties of certain objects (known to us by inference), existing in isolation from each other (indifferently dead or alive), which are linked, if at all, through various 'dynamical' effects - characterized in 'causal' terms - to other such entities of importance.

We might call this "a quantitative way of seeing the world." We can find its origins in Aristotle: he defined "quantity" as that which has parts external to one another. It is a "category" in terms of which the world becomes visible in a particular way, i.e., constituted in the form of "parts external to one another." As a way of seeing, rather than being abstracted from "the facts" of world, "quantity"is already present, ahead of time, as it were, in this way of seeing.

Measurement sciences: In the measuring of quantities, whatever is being "measured" is divided into "units" which are "external to one another," i.e., conceptualized as a string of units juxtaposed along an imagined line which effectively constitutes a scale, within a static space. To be prepare something for measurement with such a scale, the 'stuff' concerned has first to be divided into a set of homogeneous parts upon which the scale can be intellectually superimposed like a grid, framework, or structure (picture). Nature is then seen in the perspective of the framework, which is not a part of nature at all, but is intellectually imposed on it from the outside.

Mechanically assembled wholes: Such assembled systems are constructed piece by piece from parts external to one another, that is, from parts which retain their character unchanged irrespective of whether they are parts of the system or not. As such, any such assemblage is an externally related, static unity, i.e., a structure whose parts are all joined by third entities (glue, nails, etc.) into unified structures -- as an automobile is welded or nut and bolted together. Such static solely 'spatial' objects have their being in classical, neutral space and in classical, neutral time, which are both treated as empty, unchanging 'containers', simply 'there' for things to happen within them, and can be 'pictured' as such.

2) HUMAN REALITIES AS INDIVISIBLE WHOLES:

"Even the most complex of 'man-made' systems, machines for instance, are constructed piece by piece from objective parts; that is, from parts which retain their character unchanged irrespective of whether they are parts of the system or not.... But whole people as natural systems are certainly not constructed piece by piece; on the contrary, they grow. They develop from simple individuals into richly structured ones in such a way that their 'parts' at any one moment in time owe not just their character but their very existence both to one another and to their relations with the 'parts' of the system at some earlier point in time - their history is just as important as their logic in their growth, and because of this it is impossible to picture natural systems in spatial diagrams. As Capek (1965, p.162) remarks, "any spatial symbol contemplated at a given moment is complete, i.e., all its parts are given at once, simultaneously, in contrast with the temporal reality which by its very nature is incomplete and whose 'parts' - if we are justified in using such a thoroughly inadequate term - are by definition successive, i.e., nonsimultaneous" (Shotter, 1984, pp.42-43).

In contrast to "assembled systems," people, as living beings, and many of their other 'constructions', are certainly not constructed piece by piece; on the contrary, they develop and grow. They develop from simple, indivisible, unitary individuals into richly structured ones in such a way, that their 'parts' at any one moment in time owe not just their character but their very existence both to one another and to their relations with their 'parts' at some earlier point in time - thus their history is just as important as their momentary structure in their growth. Because of this, it is impossible to picture such systems in spatial diagrams: "Here the term 'language-game' is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or a form of life" (PI,1953, no.23).

Activities and practices: Wittgenstein is concerned with the complexly constituted, spontaneous activities of living beings, as they are responsively interwoven in with the spontaneously responsive activities of the others and othernesses around them. In being ineradicably, dynamically intertwined with their surroundings, they only exist as participant parts of an internally related unity, i.e., a whole whose participant parts owe not just their character but their very being to their living, responsive relation to their surroundings. Such participant parts may have their being in very different time-spaces (Bakhtin: "chronotopes") according to the different "forms of life," different styles of relationship within which they do or can function as participants: "When you are philosophizing you have to descend into primeval chaos and feel at home there" (Wittgenstein, 1980, CV, p.65).

The Bohr-Einstein controversy: This comparison parallels the Bohr-Einstein controversy: Einstein's whole position rests squarely on the presumption that sense experience can be understood in terms of an idea of some external reality whose spatially separated parts are independent realities, in the sense that they depend on each other only via connections that respect space-time separation in the usual way [This is often what is meant by REALISM!]... Bohr's refutation of the ERP argument begins by emphasizing that quantum mechanics demands a radical change in what we mean by physical reality. The whole notion of separate "elements of reality" as applied to quantum systems, he claims, no longer has a precise meaning. What is important is the whole set of conditions under which a quantum experiment is made. Choose one set of conditions, and one particular aspect [set of relations] of the quantum system is revealed. Choose a different conditions, and a complementary aspect is exhibited - with no one aspect being superordinate.