---
title: "Integration vs. Aggregation"
description: "Galison's distinction for how a planet-scale observation is assembled."
type: "glossary-term"
canonical_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/terms/integration-vs-aggregation"
md_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/md/terms/integration-vs-aggregation"
last_updated: "2026-09-06"
site: "Antikythera Wiki"
---

# Integration vs. Aggregation

> A working definition written for this wiki from the reading notes; not Antikythera's own wording. From Antikythera Wiki (https://antikythera.wiki/terms/integration-vs-aggregation), an independent guide to Antikythera's published work.

Galison's distinction for how a planet-scale observation is assembled. *Aggregation*: many independently valid pieces stitched into a mosaic (a hundred photographers each shooting one grid square of a park). *Integration*: pieces that mean nothing alone and become data only through correlation — in the Event Horizon Telescope the basic unit is the *baseline* (the correlation between two dishes, a violin string that vibrates only when fixed at both ends), and Earth's rotation multiplies baselines by foreshortening. Integration both constitutes the image and filters noise (a single dish is a bucket catching everything). This is the "subtle" third sense of planetary vision, and it quietly corrects Bratton's aggregative "compound eye" image of the EHT.

## Appears in

- [Planetary Sapience Symposium](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/planetarysapience) (2025-11-21)
- [Planetary Vision](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/planetaryvision) (2025-11-21)
- [Antikythera](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/research) (2025-05-10)

_Glossary generated 2026-09-06._