coherence

coherence, cohesion mean the quality or character of a whole all of whose parts cohere or stick together.

Coherence usually implies a unity of such immaterial or intangible things as the points of an argument, the details of a picture, or the incidents, characters, and setting of a story, or of material or objective things that are bound into unity by a spiritual, intellectual, or aesthetic relationship (as through their clear sequence or their harmony with each other); it commonly connotes an integrity which makes the whole and the relationship of its parts clear and manifest

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to treat the subject with the clearness and coherence of which it is susceptible— Wordsworth

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is there or is there not a spiritual coherence in Christianity, or is it only a gathering of laws and precepts, with no inherent connected spiritual philosophy?— Galsworthy

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scientific work . . . may indeed possess the appearance of beauty, because of the inner coherence which it shares with fine art— Alexander

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no more coherence than the scattered jangle of bells in the town below— Quiller-Couch

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Cohesion more often implies a unity of material things held together by such a physical substance as cement, mortar, or glue or by some physical force (as attraction or affinity)

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a house stands and holds together by the natural properties, the weight and cohesion of the materials which compose it— T. H. Huxley

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what am I, Life? A thing of watery salt held in cohesion by unresting cells which work they know not why, which never halt— Masefield

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Cohesion may also be used of either material or immaterial things when the emphasis is on the process by which things cohere rather than on the resulting unity

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a state composed of discordant races incapable of cohesion

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Analogous words: *unity, integrity, solidarity, union: clearness, per- spicuousness, lucidity (see corresponding adjectives at CLEAR)

Antonyms: incoherence