The realist ontologists have subdivided the world in things like functions for that exact reason. See http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/Functions-in-BF

The realist ontologists have subdivided the world in things like functions for that exact reason. See http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/Functions-in-BFO.pdf http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/Functions-in-BFO.... . Fumiaki Toyoshima has had some thoughts about functional parthood too: https://hal.science/hal-03041516/document https://hal.science/hal-03041516/document