Also called reductivism.
The reducing of certain kinds of entities, or of theories, or even of whole sciences, to other, more basic, ones; entities that are reduced may be replaced (‘Father Christmas is really Daddy’) or simply explained (‘Water is really H2O’).
Phenomenalism, for instance, reduces material objects, or sentences about them, to experiences, or sets of sentences about these. Similarly, one version of physicalism claims to reduce the other sciences to physics by showing that all their concepts and theorems can be expressed in terms of physics without loss of information.
Contrasting approaches include holism and emergence theories, though intermediate positions can be held.
Reductionism in general appeals to empiricists, nominalists, and others who use Ockham’s razor to achieve a sparse ontology (or list of what there is).
Source:
E Agazzi, ed., The Problem of Reductionism in Science (1991)
Table of Contents
- 1 Videos
- 2 Related Products
- 2.1 Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures
- 2.2 Questioning Nineteenth-Century Assumptions about Knowledge, II: Reductionism (SUNY Series, Fernand Braudel Center Studies in Historical Social Science)
- 2.3 That Hideous Strength: (Space Trilogy, Book Three) (The Space Trilogy 3)
- 2.4 Vitalism and the Scientific Image in Post-Enlightenment Life Science, 1800-2010 (History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences (2))
- 2.5 Toward Freedom: The Case Against Race Reductionism (Jacobin)
- 2.6 Chemistry, Quantum Mechanics and Reductionism: Perspectives in Theoretical Chemistry
- 2.7 Think Complexity: Complexity Science and Computational Modeling
- 2.8 The God Theory: Universes, Zero-Point Fields, and What's Behind It All
- 2.9 Doors in the Walls of the World: Signs of Transcendence in the Human Story
- 2.10 The Deeper Genome: Why there is more to the human genome than meets the eye
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