[PatrickHenry]

A particularly flagrant example [of the "fallacy of composition"] would be to argue that, since every part of a certain machine is light in weight, the machine "as a whole" is light in weight.

Because the parts of a living cell are lifeless atoms, the cell itself must be lifeless.

[general_re]

Or in reverse, one rediscovers the notion of vitalism via division - because the organism is alive, its component chemicals (molecules/atoms/quarks/et cetera) must also be "alive" in some sense.