Mereology: Theories and Problems

"Is a whole something more than the sum of its parts? Are there different things composed of the same parts? If you divide an object into parts, and divide those parts into smaller parts, will this process ever come to an end? Can something lose parts or gain new ones without ceasing to be the thing it is? Does any multitude of things (including disparate things such as your laptop, the tail of a cat, and the moon) compose a whole of some sort? Questions such as these have occupied us for at least as long as philosophy has existed. They define the field that has come to be known as mereology—the study of all relations of part to whole and of part to part within a whole—and have deep and far-reaching ramifications in metaphysics as well as in logic, the foundations of mathematics, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of science, and beyond. The aim of this seminar is to provide a critical introduction and an up-to-date assessment of the main theories in this area, with an eye to both their philosophical underpinnings and their formal properties."