Fashion critique of science: reductionism

When trying to explain to a layman why neurobiology falls from the viewpoint of chemical and other inflows, can salirte away with this series of topics on virtually all carry baggage, that is very cold, there is something else, you're biologizando man ...

But for some time now, the criticism is that par're being reductionist, as if you were calling the adjective short-sighted, dishonest or illogical.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The truth is that the word "reduction" does not even have a clear meaning. For example, we can say that a scientific discipline to another is reduced. Chemistry reduces to physics, biology reduces to chemistry, social sciences are reduced to biology, and so on. And it is also possible to gradually unify the chemistry, biology, physics and social sciences.

Because society is made up of humans. Humans are mammals that are guided by biological principles that apply to all mammals. Mammals, in turn, are composed of molecules that obey the laws of chemistry and this in turn to the rules of the underlying physics.

This type of reductionism is logical and desirable. Not so it seems that the attribute of the scientist branded alleviations says Daniel Dennett in Darwin's dangerous idea:

According to this reading fetched, reduction could be a dream to write "A comparison between Keats and Shelley from the molecular or the role of oxygen atoms in the economy of the supplies," or an "explanation of decisions Rehnquist's Court according to the fluctuations of entropy. " Probably no one is a reductionist in this sense and the whole crazy world is as wise, so that the "indictment" of reductionism is too vague to merit a response.

This kind of reductionism prudent and assembler of disciplines has been advocated by other scientists such as Douglas Hofstadter in Godel, Escher, Bach, which he composed a "drain" Prelude ... Ant "is a hymn to the virtues of analytical reductionism in place appropriate. The physicist Steven Weinberg in Dreams of a final theory, wrote a chapter entitled "Two toast to reductionism" which distinguishes reductionism not committed (something negative) and committed reductionism (which supports).

For this to be reduced, we must be careful: we must not underestimate the complexities, there is no skipping layers or levels of theory in a hasty rush to anchor everything in its foundations. But be careful not stop nor does it mean to be simplistic as something negative.

Because, as Richard Dawkins says in The Extended phenotype: reduction is an obscene word and a kind of Faris "more Catholic than the pope" that has become fashionable. "