Aggregation, Organism, Language

According to the Atomism to which Russell and the early Wittgenstein subscribe, the World consists in Atoms, and their contingent associations, aka 'external relations', in the formation of Aggregations.  Thus, for example, it follows from that principle that the 'human species' is no more than an Aggregation of Atomic humans, communication between which is extrinsic to their fundamental natures.  Now, one shortcoming of such Atomism is suggested in #47 of the Investigations--it cannot distinguish between the relation of chair-leg to a chair and that of a branch to a tree, which, despite Wittgenstein's gloss in the passage, is more than a linguistic distinction, i. e. severing a leg from a chair will not affect it internally in the way that snapping a branch off of a tree will, e. g. it will cease to grow.  Likewise, Atomism lacks the capacity to recognize the possibility that a species is itself an Organism, not an Aggregation, so that the possibility of communication between its parts, i. e. inter-personal communication, is intrinsic to their fundamental natures.  At minimum, the Atomistic rejection of the thesis that Language is fundamentally an intra-species phenomenon can be only on extra-linguistic grounds, just as the advocacy of a theory of 'external relations', can be only on extra-logical grounds.