The term scientific reductionism has been used to describe various reductionist ideas about science. ^[1] These ideas can often be conflicting. Descartes held that, unlike humans, animals could be reductively explained as automata – De homines 1622) Reductionism in philosophy is a theory that asserts that the nature of complex things can always be reduced to (explained by) simpler or more fundamental things. ... Part of a scientific laboratory at the University of Cologne. ...

Reductionist ideas

One version is simply the idea that all of nature can eventually be described scientifically; that there are no inherently unknowable facts.

Sometimes it is used to describe science (particularly physics) as a basis for ontological reductionism—the idea that everything that exists can be explained as the interactions of a small number of simple things (such as fundamental particles like quarks and leptons interacting through gauge bosons) obeying physical laws. Superstitious world-views have however been largely abandoned in the scientific community in exchange for more naturalistic approaches with empirical evidence to support them. The first few hydrogen atom electron orbitals shown as cross-sections with color-coded probability density. ... Ontological reductionism is the idea that everything that exists is made from a small number of basic substances that behave in regular ways. ... ... For other uses of this term, see: Quark (disambiguation) 1974 discovery photograph of a possible charmed baryon, now identified as the Σc++ In particle physics, the quarks are subatomic particles thought to be elemental and indivisible. ... A lepton is also a unit of currency. ... Gauge bosons are bosonic particles which act as carriers of the fundamental forces of Nature. ... Superstition is a set of behaviors that may be faith based, or related to magical thinking, whereby the practitioner believes that the future, or the outcome of certain events, can be influenced by certain of his or her behaviors. ...

One attack against this form of reductionism, which is popular among solid-state physicists, argues that it is incorrect to regard the laws which govern the components of structures to be more fundamental than the laws which govern the structures. For example, it has been argued that a traffic jam contains patterns of behavior which cannot be reduced to the behavior of an individual car. Similarly metals undergo collective behavior and interactions that are not reducible to the behavior of an individual atom within that metal, and it has been argued that the laws which describe this collective behavior are no less fundamental than the laws that describe the atoms themselves. Traffic jams are common in heavily populated areas. ...

Another attack against the idea of reductionism comes from supporters of the anthropic principle. Some believe that the laws of physics may be randomly determined and explain the fact that we observe certain physical laws by postulating that only a small subset of laws allow for conscious observers. Seen this way, consciousness does not arise from the laws of physics, but rather the observed laws of physics exist because of consciousness. In cosmology, the anthropic principle in its most basic form states the truism that any valid theory of the universe must be consistent with our existence as carbon-based human beings at this particular time and place in the universe. ...

Daniel Dennett defends this basic kind of reductionism, which he says is really little more than materialism, by making a distinction between this and what he calls "Greedy reductionism": the idea that every explanation in every field of science should be reduced all the way down to particle physics or string theory. Greedy reductionism, he says, deserves some of the criticism that has been heaped on reductionism in general because the lowest-level explanation of a phenomenon, even if it exists, is not always the best way to understand or explain it. Richard Dawkins describes the alternative as "hierarchical" reductionism: organisms can be described in terms of DNA, DNA in terms of atoms, atoms in terms of sub-atomic particles; but there is no need to deal with details of sub-atomic particles to explain animal behavior if one can make adequate explanations and predictions at a higher level. Daniel Clement Dennett (b. ... In philosophy, materialism is that form of physicalism which holds that the only thing that can truly be said to exist is matter; that fundamentally, all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. ... Greedy reductionism is a term coined by Daniel Dennett, in the book Darwins Dangerous Idea, to distinguish between acceptable and erroneous forms of reductionism. ... Thousands of particles explode from the collision point of two relativistic (100 GeV per nucleon) gold ions in the STAR detector of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. ... Interaction in the subatomic world: world lines of pointlike particles in the Standard Model or a world sheet swept up by closed strings in string theory String theory is a model of fundamental physics whose building blocks are one-dimensional extended objects (strings) rather than the zero-dimensional points (particles... Clinton Richard Dawkins (born March 26, 1941) is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science writer who holds the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. ... Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions for the development and function of living things. ... Properties In chemistry and physics, an atom (Greek ἄτομος or átomos meaning indivisible) is the smallest particle of a chemical element that retains its chemical properties. ...

Both Dennett and Steven Pinker argue that too many people who are opposed to science use the words "reductionism" and "reductionist" less to make coherent claims about science than to convey a general distaste for the endeavor. Furthermore, these opponents often use the words in a rather slippery way, to refer to whatever they dislike most about science. Dennett suggests that critics of reductionism may be searching for a way of salvaging some sense of a higher purpose to life, in the form of some kind of non-material / supernatural intervention. Dennett terms such aspirations "skyhooks," in contrast to the "cranes" that reductionism uses to build its understanding of the universe from solid ground. He writes :- Steven Pinker Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a prominent American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, and popular science writer known for his spirited and wide-ranging advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. ...

The term that is most often bandied about in these conflicts, typically as a term of abuse, is "reductionism." Those who yearn for skyhooks call those who eagerly settle for cranes "reductionists," and they can often make reductionism seem philistine and heartless. But like most terms of abuse, "reductionism" has no fixed meaning. (Dennett 1995, p. 80)

As Pinker puts it,

Attempts to explain behavior in mechanistic terms are commonly denounced as "reductionist" or "determinist." The denouncers rarely know exactly what they mean by those words, but everyone knows they refer to something bad. (Pinker 2002, p. 10)

In light of this, it might be wise to make some effort to distinguish between rabble-rousing uses of these words, and efforts to make serious claims with them.

Alternatives to reductionism

In recent years, the development of systems thinking has provided methods for tackling issues in a holistic rather than a reductionist way, and many scientists are considered to belong to a holistic paradigm, commonly seen as an alternative to mainstream reductive science in certain fields. When the terms are used constructively in the science context, holism and reductionism refer to how empirical evidence is interpreted, and not only to the methods used to produce such evidence. Systems thinking is an approach to analysis that is based on the belief that the component parts of a system will act differently when isolated from its environment or other parts of the system, and argues against Descartess reductionist view. ... Holism (from holos, a Greek word meaning all, entire, total) is the idea that all the properties of a given system (biological, chemical, social, economic, mental, linguistic, etc. ... Holism in science, or Holistic science, is an approach to research that emphasizes the study of complex systems. ...

In many cases (such as the kinetic theory of gases), given a good understanding of the components of the system, one can predict all the important properties of the system as a whole. In other cases, trying to do this leads to a fallacy of composition. In those systems, emergent properties of the system are almost impossible to predict from knowledge of the parts of the system. Complexity theory studies such systems. Kinetic theory attempts to explain macroscopic properties of gases, such as pressure, temperature, or volume, by considering their molecular composition and motion. ... A fallacy of composition arises when one infers that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some (or even every) part of the whole. ... ... Complexity theory can refer to more than one thing: Computational complexity theory: a field in theoretical computer science and mathematics dealing with the resources required during computation to solve a given problem Systems theory (or systemics or general systems theory): an interdisciplinary field including engineering, biology and philosophy that incorporates...

References and further reading

• Daniel Dennett (1995) Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life. ISBN 0-684-80290-2
• Steven Pinker (2002) The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Viking Penguin.
• Steven Wolfram (2002) describes what he terms the culture war among physicists in his review of A New Kind of Science
• Eric Scerri The reduction of chemistry to physics has become a central aspect of the philosophy of chemistry. See several articles by this author.

1. ^ Gerald L. Smith, Essay: On Reductionism, 1994. Accessed 31st May 2006