Blackwell Reference Online

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Biological Reductionism holds that all facts, including all the non-macromolecular biological facts, are fixed by the facts of molecular biology. Accordingly, nonmolecular biological explanations need to be completed, corrected, made more precise or otherwise deepened by more fundamental explanations in molecular biology. Antireductionism does not dispute reductionism's metaphysical claim about the fixing of biological facts by macromolecular ones, but denies it has implications either for explanatory strategies or methodological morals. The antireductionists hold that explanations in functional biology need not be corrected, completed, or otherwise made more adequate by explanations in terms of molecular biology. Reduction was supposed by the post-Logical Positivists (or Logical Empiricists, as some preferred to call themselves) to be a relation between theories. In Ernest Nagel's Structure of Science (1961 ), reduction is characterized by the deductive derivation of the laws of the reduced theory from the laws of the reducing theory. The deductive derivation requires that the concepts, categories, explanatory properties, or natural kinds of the reduced theory be captured in the reducing theory. To do so, terms that figure in both theories must share common meanings. Though often stated explicitly, this second requirement is actually redundant as valid deductive derivation presupposes ... log in or subscribe to read full text