Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The term “reductionism” is used broadly for any claim that some range of phenomena can be fully assimilated to some other, apparently distinct range of phenomena. The logical positivist thesis that scientific truth could be fully analyzed into reports of immediate experience was a reductionistic thesis of great significance in the history of the philosophy of science (see logical positivism). In recent philosophy of science, “reductionism” is generally used more specifically to refer to the thesis that all scientific truth should ultimately be explicable, in principle at least, by appeal to fundamental laws governing the behavior of microphysical particles.A classic exposition of this kind of reductionism is that of Oppenheim and Putnam (1958). Oppenheim and Putnam propose a hierarchical classification of objects, the objects at each level being composed entirely of entities from the next lower level. They suggest the following levels: elementary particles, atoms, molecules, living cells, multicellular organisms, and social groups. The investigation of each level is the task of a particular domain of science, which aims to discern the laws governing the behavior of objects at that level. Reduction consists in deriving the laws at each higher (reduced) level from the laws governing the objects at the next lower (reducing) level. Such reduction will also require so-called bridge principles ... log in or subscribe to read full text