Talk:Reductionism

This is just a stub, importing material formerly in Scientific MethodGareth Leng 09:52, 6 March 2007 (CST)

Proposal for a wider scope for this article: anyone interested?

At the moment Reductionism is focused upon the idea of reductionism as an 'approach' to science, and particularly physics and chemistry. This view is too restrictive and doesn't deal with the really wide spectrum of this concept. The article in WP quotes John Polkinghorne: the belief "that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts." A related view is that "for any [focal] level of phenomena there is a lower level that explains in a causal way the focal level." These seem to me a better starting point. Is anyone interested in redrafting this article? John R. Brews 18:50, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Part of this revision could consider an antireductionist view that is exploited by crackpots, like that of Stuart Kaufman, who leans heavily upon emergence and wishes to reopen the door to a Creator. John R. Brews 18:55, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps the most interesting aspects of reduction show up in biology with the struggle to determine just what are the organizing principles: gene interaction, natural selection and a host of other nebulous issues appear to compete for dominance. There is an article in the Stanford Encyclopedia: Brigandt & Love. John R. Brews 19:02, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

• "for any [focal] level of phenomena there is a lower level that explains in a causal way the focal level." Sounds like what you might call infinite reductionism: turtles all the way down. Contrast reduction to, say, particle physics. Peter Jackson 14:23, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi Peter: So gald you engaged here.

Is there a contrast? It seems that high-energy physics is always finding another layer of the onion.

I'd guess the 'hot' issue here is that explanations based upon the lowest available level of explanation are so complex as to be unhelpful. So, for example, determining how genes behave cannot be attempted using the Standard model. It may be reassuring psychologically that chemistry can "in principle" be traced back to quantum mechanics, but in actual fact you can't even explain the He atom using quantum mechanics without introducing approximations based upon intuitions about the system behavior. So I am asking myself, what is the point of "knowing" everything is reducible to string theory when that tidbit of information has absolutely no practical implications (even if you have a hadron collider in the back yard)? Maybe its only value is in calming the nerves?

Maybe this article can go into such matters? John R. Brews 15:19, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

There's a difference between factual discovery of lower levels and a belief that there will always be lower levels.

Last I heard, string theory was still so complicated that it didn't actually explain anything at all, let alone high-level stuff.

Philosophically, there are questions about whether something that can't actually be found in pracice, such as such explanations, "really" exist. This comes up in quantum theory, where the standard interpretation seems to abandon the concept of reality altogether.

These are just some thoughts of my own. Whether I'll feel like doing the research to find out what academics have said is another matter. Peter Jackson 08:26, 3 September 2013 (UTC)