Reductionism
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Reductionism in philosophy is the theory that asserts that the nature of complex things can always be reduced to (explained by) simpler or more fundamental things. This can be said of objects, phenomena, explanations, theories, and meanings.
For example, fundamental chemistry is based on physics, fundamental biology is based on chemistry, and psychology and sociology are both based on biology. The first two of these reductions are commonly accepted but the last step is controversial. Aspects of evolutionary psychology and sociobiology are rejected by those who claim that complex systems are inherently irreducible or holistic. Reductionists believe that the behavioral sciences should become a "genuine" scientific discipline by being based on genetic biology, and on the systematic study of culture (cf. Dawkins's concept of memes).
A typical reductionistic book is The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. It argues that because genes are the fundamental elements of life, all life and all natural behavior can best be understood by studying genetic mechanisms. This model contemplates life as a temporary accommodation and a reproduction device for the genes.
In his book The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins introduced the term "hierarchical reductionism" (p. 13). This means that reductionism is effective in explaining a system in terms of its component parts, but not useful if extended directly to the smallest possible parts. For example, if one throws Stephen Jay Gould out of a window, his fall can be explained by classical mechanics. But it cannot be understood from such principles as elementary particle physics or superstring theory.
There are several generally accepted types or forms of reduction in both science and philosophy:
- Ontological reductionism is the idea that everything that exists is made from a small number of basic substances that behave in regular ways (compare to monism).
- Methodological reductionism is the idea that explanations of things, such as scientific explanations, ought to be continually reduced to the very simplest entities possible (but no simpler). Occam's Razor forms the basis of this type of reductionism.
- Theoretical reductionism is the idea that older theories or explanations are not generally replaced outright by new ones, but that new theories are refinements or reductions of the old theory into more efficacious forms with greater detail and explanatory power. The older theories are supposedly absorbed into the newer ones and they can be deductively derived from the latter.
- Scientific reductionism has been used to describe all of the above ideas as they relate to science, but is most often used to describe the idea that all phenomena can be reduced to scientific explanations.
- Linguistic reductionism is the idea that everything can be described in a language with a limited number of core concepts, and combinations of those concepts. (See Basic English and the constructed language Toki Pona).
- The term "greedy reductionism" was coined by Daniel Dennett to condemn those forms of reductionism that try to explain too much with too little.
The denial of reductionist ideas is holism; the idea that things can have properties as a whole that are not explainable from the sum of their parts. The principle of holism was concisely summarized by Aristotle in the Metaphysics: "The whole is more than the sum of its parts". Phenomena such as emergence and work within the field of complex systems theory are also considered to bring forth possible objections to reductionism.
Outside the field of strictly philosophical discourse, the best known denial of reductionism is religious belief, which, in most of its forms, assigns supernatural or metaphysical original causes to phenomena. In this approach, even if a given system operates by strictly reductionistic causes-and-effects, its "true" genesis and placement within larger (and typically unknown) systems is bound up with an intelligence or "consciousness" beyond normal human perception.
See also
References
- Dawkins, R. (1976) The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press; 2nd edition, December 1989 ISBN 0192177737.
- Nagel, E. (1961) The Structure of Science. New York.
- Ruse, M.(1988) Philosophy of Biology. Albany, NY.
- Dennett, Daniel. (1995) Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 068482471X.
External links
- Neither reductionism nor parochialism
- Are you nothing but genes or neurons?
- John Dupré: The Disunity of Science, an interview at the Galilean Library covering criticisms of reductionism.
