Some people just want to watch the world burn.

Others are curious. What is fire? Is electricity fire? What's the smallest thing That can be on fire? How can you make something burn faster?

We make up little explanations about how knowing the answers to these questions makes us more productive world-burners, but in the end we're just curious people.

I think the decomposition is important but not necessariy that you have to continue that process until you have atomic parts.

Understanding the decomposition allows you to internalize the behavior of a complex entity and thus understand and predict how it will behave in different (i.e. previously unseen) contexts.

If you avoid decomposition and instead view each entity as a one-off with its own unique behavior patterns then you are limited to memorizing the behavior on a case-by-case basis. Any extrapolation or prediction of behavior would be as effective as random guesses.