"It was only in the context of this particular, functioning idiosyncratic whole that one could even say, in the first place, what the parts themselves were. " - so the opposite of synergy. is there a word for it? anyway, it does suggest novel compression methods.
"why this rather than that," - i think the standard answer in biology is path dependence (history). i am not sure you mean this to be one of your constraints.
"It was only in the context of this particular, functioning idiosyncratic whole that one could even say, in the first place, what the parts themselves were. " - so the opposite of synergy. is there a word for it? anyway, it does suggest novel compression methods.
"why this rather than that," - i think the standard answer in biology is path dependence (history). i am not sure you mean this to be one of your constraints.