This prompted thinkers like Carl Ludwig and Hermann von Helmholtz to assert, not unlike La Mettrie and other thinkers in the early eighteenth century, that the entire range of phenomena pertaining to life may be understood and explained in terms of physics, chemistry, and their mechanistic framework.
Indeed, the term reductionism was coined by biologists. Its practical i. Reductionism holds that some day we can explain chemistry, biology, and even psychology through the principles of fundamental physics. This conclusion seemed obvious to some of the founders of Quantum Mechanics in the s. A climax of the reductionist quest is to be found in the so-called Standard Model and the dreams of a final TOE: Theory Of Everything, whose goal is to reduce the entire phenomenal world to one single equation: in other words, to formulate a single all-embracing principle of which the range and variety of the entire universe are but inevitable consequences.
While it is possible to break down a system into its component parts and functions, it is difficult to see how those parts and functions add up to what is actually observed. This is often illustrated with a simple example. Two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen are very different in aspect and properties from the water molecule that results by their combination.
The bonds and structures of molecules give rise to properties that are seldom found in their component atoms. Thus, reductionism reveals to us what are underneath everything, but says little about how they converge into something very different. In other words, reductionism reveals the being part of the world, but hardly throws any light on the becoming aspect. This is why uncompromising reductionism is sometimes pejoratively characterized as scientism.
This is why the general trend during the past few decades has been to criticize, not to say condemn reductionism as inadequate at the very least, and misleading at worst. Moreover, while reductionism may seem reasonable for the physical world, its application to the biological and the human world is not as convincing to many philosophers, theologians, and commentators on science.
There is an implicit assumption in some of the criticisms that scientists somehow embrace reductionism with the same zeal or unshakable conviction as other systems do about the infallibility of scriptures. It must be emphasized that reductionism has an appeal for only one reason: it has given rise to an incredibly rich harvest of significant results. Most molecular biologists and neuroscientists who write technical papers in peer-reviewed journals, and contribute to new breakthroughs in science work in their fields from this perspective.
Yet, as and when other approaches arise in whatever context, if and when a non-reductionist approach turns out to be useful in providing explanations of observed phenomena, the world of science does and will adopt it. Reductionism as a philosophy of nature may be clarified by emphasizing the difference between what Steven Weinberg called petty and grand reductionism. In the first kind, one maintains that the properties of most things can be explained in terms of the properties of their constituents.
It is true that this cannot resolve all the problems of science. That is to say, not all the observed properties of complex systems can be reduced to specific properties of its simpler constituents. However, this is not what physicists generally mean by reductionism.
They mean rather the view that everything can be explained only in terms of clear laws and principles, often mathematically expressible, and that ultimately all the known laws and principles can be reduced traced to a minimum number of laws and principles.
This may be called grand reductionism. When one undertakes to explain any aspect of the world in a coherent and systematic way, one assumes that the world functions in coherent and systematic ways. Grand reductionism is an affirmation of this assumption. One either adopts it and goes on with the job of accounting for various aspects of observed reality, or one abandons it and does something else. In this sense, one may say that grand reductionism is at the root of all scientific explanatory endeavors.
Furthermore, science knows that there are any number of problems whose solution can be found without going to the root causes or fundamental laws. Weinberg cites the example of weather prediction where one speaks of cold fronts, warm fronts, and thunderstorms, which are useful parameters.
Indeed, these are far more helpful than the molecular motion of the gases, the laws of heat exchanges, and the like which are ultimately responsible for the weather patters.
A physician might treat a patient on the basis of the reported head-aches, stomach-aches, inability to read small letters, etc. Holism is a philosophical view which states that by considering the whole picture one gets a deeper and more complete view of a situation than by analyzing it into its component parts. What this means is that a system consisting of several recognizable parts has properties which are not present in any of is component parts.
The view that a forest presents is different from that of each of its individual trees. It takes time, effort, and careful analysis and search to find out the details of the components, that is to say, to establish the reductionist basis of a system. There is hardly a system without holistic properties. More often that not, what we experience is the holistic aspect of a system. From this perspective, the process of analysis may lead us to the reductionist components, but on the way some aspect of the whole is lost.
There are, in fact, three kinds of holism. The first is a vision, an all-embracing view of a system as a whole. The grand view of a forest as a whole is different from the view of a single tree. This kind of holism is interesting, satisfying, and meaningful. Reductionism is a theory in psychology centered on reducing complex phenomena into their most basic parts.
As a holistic thinker, you approach everything as a part of the whole. Nothing stands alone and nothing is linear in time or in space. This means that things can happen at the same time, alternating, never independently but always as a reaction to some form of stimulation which is all part of the whole.
Entry 1 of 2 1 : of or relating to a part rather than the whole : not general or total a partial solution a partial payment. Feeling stuck? Philosophy helps you organize and understand yourself and what we call the external world in context, as in order to study philosophy, many things are included in that- history among them. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. For example, the social learning theory proposes that children will copy the behaviour of their role model often a same-sex parent.
Biological reductionists argue that all human behaviour can be explained, or reduced to, a physical explanation. Genes, neurotransmitters, hormones and more can all influence our behaviour, biological reductionists believe that biology alone can explain human behaviour. Experimental reductionism reduces complex behaviours to isolated variables which can be manipulated in an experiment. They believe that these variables can be measured to determine causal relationships.
In contrast, holism focuses on systems as a whole rather than individually. An example of holism in Gestalt psychology. Founded in Germany in the early 20th century, Gestalt psychology focussed on perception and argued that explanations only make sense as a whole, and that looking at individual elements won't make sense on their own. Similarly, humanistic and cognitive psychologists also follow a holism approach. The humanistic approach argues that actions as a whole forms an identity; so a lack of 'wholeness' or identity leads to a mental disorder.
Cognitive psychologists believe that the network of neurons in our brain which are formed and destroyed by environmental experiences acts differently as a whole than as individual components. This approach argues that individual components aren't as important in explaining behaviour than how all these components work together as a whole. An advantage of biological reductionism is that it has led to an increased use of drug therapies. A greater understanding of biology has enabled more successful and effective drugs to combat mental illnesses.
As a result, less individuals have been institutionalised and it has also encouraged a more humane treatment for those with mental disorders. A biological explanation prevents blame from being pushed onto individuals with disorders. However, drug therapies also have limitations. For example, many treatments such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy CBT have shown to be highly effective, but drug therapies may encourage people to ignore the success of CBT to use the cheaper and quicker option of drugs.
Another issue with drug therapies is that they treat symptoms not causes - there may be environmental causes to certain disorders. Taking drugs will not cure any mental illnesses in the long run because they don't always address the actual issue. Another limitation of biological reductionism is that it can make people overlook the meaning of behaviours. For example, Wolpe treated a married woman who had a fear of insects with systematic desensitisation.
There was no improvement, which later revealed to be because her husband had been given an insect nickname. Her fear of insects had been caused by her worries about her unhappy and unstable marriage. This example shows that biological reductionism cannot treat or explain psychological levels of explanation and can lead to an ignorance of actual causes of behaviour. A criticism of environmental reductionism is that the approach was developed on research conducted on non-human animals, for example Harlow's study of attachment on monkeys.
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