Anti-reductionism

A second point on which the authors in this anthology agree is that reductionism, as successful as it has been on a host of counts, is seriously inadequate. It must be supplemented with more holistic science. To understand nature in all its vicissitudes, methods from the most reductionist to the least reductionist must be used. Hence, anti-reductionists are forced, like it or not, to advocate pluralism. For example, Robert Williams concludes that We must not despise reductionism. However, it has to be put in a proper perspective . Too often reductionism and anti-reductionism are presented as if they are in diametric opposition when all that separates them is degree of emphasis. As Alfred Tauber observes, reductionism and holism cannot be defined in isolation from each other. An unsteady balance exists between the two. Holism and reductionism are inexorably coupled and cannot be defined independent of each other . As a result, like so many other contributors to this volume, he embraces a pluralistic approach . 

Alex Rosenberg That s a critical question because there are at least some defenders of emergentism and anti-reductionism who have distinguished sharply between causation as an ontological phenomena and explanation as epistemological and say that though physicalism is true, that is, we are nothing but matter and motion, nevertheless, the best explanations of our behaviour will not be physical. Bob ... 

See Fischer and Lipscomb (1988) Sarkar (1989) reconstructs the history of Delbriick s idiosyncratic anti-reductionism and the influence on him of Bohr s hope for the discovery of complementarity in biology. 

Block, N. (1997a). Anti-reductionism slaps back. Philosophical Perspectives, ii, 107-32. 

The above analysis is not intended to imply that the Kripke-Putnam theory of reference is free of any criticism. For example, two prominent philosophers of chemistry have objected to it on the basis that it relies too heavily upon micro-reduction. For example, van Brakel espouses a radical anti-reductionism in which he favors the manifest image over micro-reduction. His writings have included a thoroughgoing critique of Kripke s and Putnam s theory and a review of all other critiques that have been made in the context of chemical kinds (van Brakel 2000). Similarly, Needham takes an anti-reductionist approach and prefers to define substances through the Gibbs phase rule (Needham 2005). 

Finally, reductionism can refer to an attitude toward science, an attitude that I term the hup-two-three school. Reductionists think that we can actually make progress in science. No problem is, in principle, impossible to solve. Perhaps we cannot solve it now, it looks too complicated, but if we only work harder, we can solve it. Anti-reductionists disagree. Some phenomena are simply too complicated to understand from a reductionistic perspective or by using reductionist methods. If these phenomena are to be understood at all, they will have to be understood from a more holistic perspective. In this connection, anti-reductionists view reductionists as Philistines. Reductionists simply do not understand the scope, depth and complexity of the phenomena that they are investigating. 

Based on these minimal characterizations of the distinctions between anti-realism/realism and eliminativism/conservatism, we can introduce a taxonomy of four monistic positions, all of which have been associated with some stance towards reductionism. I will again refer to the case of biology ... 

Now, the different positions sketched above raise different conceptual issues. This book deals with monistic realism regarding high-level science. For the monist, the idea of reconciling diversity and directionality with strong unity without relying on (metaphysical) elimination, or anti-realism, is particularly pressing. This leads to an important distinction between issues related to reductionism on the one hand, and eliminativism, or replacementism on the other. 

Recall the distinctions suggested in the introduction concerning the connection between realist/anti-reaUst and conservative/eliminative versions of reductionism, that correspond to different interpretations of the alleged truth or relevance of high-level theories or sciences (see Table 9.1). 

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