BioConcepts

collective propertiesKollektiveigenschaften (ger.)

• Poperties of a collection of parts that the parts in isolation do not have.
  category wholeness

  1933

  Now a complex substance will always have some dispositions which do not belong to the substances which are its constituents. Thus water boils, under normal pressure, at 100° C., whilst neither oxygen nor hydrogen, of which it is composed, has this property. Let us call properties which belong to a compound substance as a whole, and not to any of its constituents »Collective Properties«. It is, of course, plain that, if there be simple substances, they can have no collective properties. 

  Broad, C.D. (1933). Examination of McTaggart’s Philosophy, vol. 1: 268.