Is the essence of a person the sum total of his atoms?

[Aloysium]

It is clear that we are just an advanced breed of primates on a minor planet orbiting around a very average star, in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies

This seems to be the default position for those raised on a heavy dose of science fiction.
It is not clear we are primates although we physically resemble them.
We are no more like primates than is a giant redwood like a blade of grass.
As to advanced, who is to qualify scientifically our physical structure to be more advanced than a gorilla, more advanced than the microbes specialized for living in underwater volcanic vents.
A very average star on what basis? How many have satellites containing life? How is it that an average star produced such a planet.
And, what a planet. There’s nothing like it anywhere but in people’s fantasies.
Outer suburb, lol. Seriously? We should be at the centre falling into a black hole.
Bright man, poor imagination? Perhaps it is something else. It is not so much self-effacing humility as it is the sort of statements that diminish people. It’s completely an emotional rather than rational statement. A remnant of wounded pride? Definitely a statement that does anything but an acknowledge the miracle of our existence and its value. That’s what I hear, for what it’s worth.

 

[Jerbear]

No, it’s called synergy.

 

[Aloysium]

Synergy has to do with two agents being more effective than they are individually.
Examples are found in medicine where two treatments in combination work better than each alone and their predicted additive effect. A music group can sell more records than each of its members going solo.
In terms of this discussion, I would say is that the concept of synergy has it backwards.
A whole being such as the person, you as a prime example, is very different from your constituent parts.
Parts cannot combine to form a whole. They combine to form a bigger version of the same thing.
We incorporate matter into ourselves and thereby live and grow. The matter does not create us, we transform it into our being.

 

[inocente]

Hawking makes the elementary mistake of equating size with significance - which is understandable because he is a scientist not a philosopher.

Dr Hawking PhD, CBE, CH, FRS, FRSA, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Prince of Asturias Award, Adams Prize, Eddington Medal, Maxwell Medal and Prize, Heineman Prize, Hughes Medal, Albert Einstein Award, RAS Gold Medal, Dirac Medal, Wolf Prize, Andrew Gemant Award, Naylor Prize and Lectureship, Lilienfeld Prize, Albert Medal, …

But by learning some science, you say, he became a dunderhead, befuddled by elementary mistakes which anyone on an internet forum can see?

Yes. Well.

 

[inocente]

Synergy has to do with two agents being more effective than they are individually.
Examples are found in medicine where two treatments in combination work better than each alone and their predicted additive effect. A music group can sell more records than each of its members going solo.
In terms of this discussion, I would say is that the concept of synergy has it backwards.
A whole being such as the person, you as a prime example, is very different from your constituent parts.
Parts cannot combine to form a whole. They combine to form a bigger version of the same thing.
We incorporate matter into ourselves and thereby live and grow. The matter does not create us, we transform it into our being.

Synergy is basically the Aristotelian notion that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. See also emergence, the process by which new properties emerge unpredictably from simpler entities.