From Quantum Wholeness to Stratified Reality: The Construction and Justification of the “1=N” Ontological Principle

Quantum mechanics places “wholeness” at the core of scientific description, yet this very act creates a fundamental clash with our classical intuition. Traditional philosophical holism (e.g., “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”), while intuitively appealing, struggles to engage with precise science due to its inherent vagueness. This paper aims to bridge this gap. We take an unconventional approach, starting not from the history of philosophy but from the scientific problem itself. By constructing two nuanced thought-experiment models—the “Spear and Shield” paradox and the “Boxing Match”—we translate the abstract quantum wholeness (superposition-entanglement-collapse) into an intuitive “potential-process-actual” structure of events. Based on this isomorphic model, we distill and rigorously argue for a novel ontological principle: “1=N”. This principle posits that, in the fundamental order of existence, cognition, and reference, the whole as a unified entity at a specific functional level (1) is logically prior to the collection of its parts (N). The key advancements of this paper are: 1) Explicitly embedding “stratification” as an intrinsic property of “1,” proposing that reality is recursively constituted by “1”s at different levels; 2) Introducing the concept of “parsing” as the universal mechanism generating determinate phenomena (a specific “1”) from the potential whole (N), thereby offering a clear resolution to puzzles like quantum measurement; and 3) Actively engaging “1=N” with contemporary relational ontology and decoherence theory, establishing it as a precise, operational framework for holism. Originating from quantum conundrums, this principle provides a unified and robust philosophical foundation for understanding everything from microscopic particles to life and social systems.