Is a whole something more than the sum of its parts? Are there 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 that it is? Does any multitude of things (including disparate things such as you, this book, and the tail of a cat) compose a whole of some sort?

Composition is the relation between a whole and its part — the parts are said to compose the whole; the whole is composed of the parts. But is a whole anything distinct from its parts taken collectively? It is often said that ‘a whole is nothing over and above its parts’; but what might we mean by that? Could it be that the whole just is its parts? This collection of essays is the first of its kind to focus on the relationship between composition and identity.