p.251 We must see group phenomena as both the product and condition of actions of individuals... There are no forces between individuals and organisms; yet to all intents and purposes they act as if there were, and they actually create social forces. Group action achieves the kind of result that would be understandable if all participants were acting under the direction of a single organizing center. No such center exists; between individuals is a hiatus, which nevertheless, they succeed in overcoming with surprising effectiveness.

 p.251-252 There are group actions that are possible only when each participant has a representation that includes the actions of others and their relations. The respective actions converge relevantly, assist and supplement each other only when the joint situation is represented in each and when the representations are structurally similar. Only when these conditions are given can individuals subordinate themselves to the requirements of joint action. These representations and the actions that they initiate/bring group facts into existence and produce the phenomenal solidity of group process.

p.252 When these conditions are given we have a social system or a process of a definite form that embraces the actions of a number of individuals. Such a system does not reside in the individuals taken separately, though each individual contributes to it; nor does it reside outside them; it is present in the interrelations between the activities of individuals.

p.252 The form the interrelated actions take - on a team or in an office - is a datum of precisely the same kind as any other fact. One could say that all the facts of the system can be expressed as the sum of the actions of individuals. The statement is misleading, however, if one fails to add that the individuals would not be capable of these particular actions unless they were responding to (or envisaging the possibility of) the system. Once the process described is in motion it is no longer the individual "as such" who determines its direction, nor the group acting upon the individual as an external force, but individuals working with, for, or against each other.

a type of part-whole relation unprecedented in nature. It is the only part-whole relation that depends on the recapitulation of the structure of the whole in the part.... is a process in which individuals play an extraordinary role, confronting us with groups at the human level

p.257 the unusual process that gives rise to