Reductionist

The fundamental challenge of physics has always been the understanding of the phenomenologically observed complexity in nature using a minimal set of simple principles. This reductionist program has historically-and for obvious reasons-concentrated mostly on studies of comparatively simple systems, deliberately avoiding more complex descriptions and phenomena. 

The term collectivism has sometimes been used to distinguish this AL philosophy from the more traditional top down and bottom up philosophies. Collectivism embodies the belief that in order to properly understand complex systems, such systems must be viewed as coherent wholes whose open-ended evolution is continuously fueled by nonlinear feedback between their macroscopic states and microscopic constituents. It is neither completely reductionist (which seeks only to decompose a system into its primitive components), nor completely synthesist (which seeks to synthesize the system out of its constituent parts but neglects the feedback between emerging levels). 

Collectivism is thus distinct from both the top-down reductionist approach traditionally favored by most physicists (system as a simple edifice of its microscopic parts), and the more recent neural-net-like bottom-up approach favored by connec-tionists (system as a synthesis of its constituent parts). The nonlinear inter-level feedback loop that makes up the collective is what makes a traditional linear analysis of such systems difficult, if not impossible. 

The dynamic,s underlying EINSTein is patterned after mobile CA rules, and are somewhat reminiscent of Braitenberg s Vehicles [brait84]. Specifically, EINSTein takes a artificial-life-like bottom-up, synthesist approach to the modeling of combat, rather than the more traditional top-down, or reductionist approach,... 

Reductionist World-View Holistic World-View a shift away from a long held belief that complex self-organized behavior requires a complex underlying dynamics and/or substructure towards the new notion that complexity is an emer-gent/holistic phenomenon that often arises from the interactions among a large assemblage of otherwise simple parts i.e. the properties of the parts must be understood as a dynamics of whole. 

If we are to take a reductionist approach, then let it be one that is consistent with both of the fundamental theories of physics, the science that chemistry approximately reduces to (11). 

Quantum mechanics is part of the reductionist tradition in modem science, and the general claim, often just made implicitly as in any branch of reduction, is that the highest ideal one can aspire to is to derive everything from the theoretical principles. The less experimental data one needs to appeal to, the less one is introducing measured parameters the purer the calculation and the closer it approaches to the ideal of Ockham s razor of being as economical as possible (Hoffman, Minkin, Carpenter, 1996).2... 

But what would become of Mendeleev s periodic system which now seemed to consist of 300 or so "elements" To some chemists, the discovery of isotopes implied the end of the periodic system as it was known.3 These chemists suggested that it would be necessary to consider the individual new isotopes as the new "elements." But the chemist Paneth adopted a less reductionist approach, arguing that the periodic table of the familiar chemical elements should be retained because it dealt with the "elements" that were of interest to chemists. A justification for this view was provided by the fact that, with a few exceptions, the chemical properties of isotopes of the same element are indistinguishable.4 Moreover, Paneth appealed to Mendeleev s distinction between the two senses of the concept of an "element" in order to provide a philosophical rationale for the retention of the chemist s periodic table. Paneth argued that the discovery of isotopes of the elements represents the discovery of new elements as simple substances, whereas periodic... 

In the July 2007 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education Bent and Weinhold, an inorganic and a theoretical chemist, respectively, published an extensive paper on the left-step periodic table. One rather noticeable feature of their article is the overtly reductionist stance that the authors adopt. They wrote... 

A third quotation to illustrate the naively reductionist approach of Bent and Weinhold is as follows ... 

But the reductionist approach adopted by Bent and Weinhold is nevertheless consistent with their wanting to explain the periodic table through the properties of the neutral atoms of the elements rather than their macroscopic properties. 

At the basis there is the tacit assumption of a reductionistic ideal. Quantum mechanics in the current version is the correct theory, and the process of extracting from the whole universe the molecule subjected to accurate calculations does not create problems. I do not object this assumption, being however aware that there are objections, mainly for the process of abstraction of one molecule from the whole universe ( see, e.g. Primas [13])... 

Group I relies, as said before, on the reductionistic ideal that everything, in the field of chemistry, is amenable to the first principles and that a correct applications of the principles, accompanied by the necessary computational effort, will give the answer one is searching. It is a rigourous approach, based on quantum mechanical principles, in which the elements of the computation have no cognitive status, unless when employed to get numerical values of physical observables or of other quantities having a well defined status in the theory. 

Similarity clustering implies an automated generalization of increments using a similarity hierarchical clustering procedure, followed by the optimization of the generic increments. This procedure combines the advantages of both the constructionist and reductionist approaches, and is a central method in AB/LogP. 

One of the most innovating contributions of the diagnostic model proposed in these guidelines is that it combines idiographic elements within a standardized multiaxial system, in contrast to the conventional, reductionist opinions that favor only one of these elements. 

The term mental disorder unfortunately implies a distinction between "mental" disorders and "physical" disorders that is a reductionistic anachronism of mind/body dualism.. .. There is much "physical" in "mental" disorders and much "mental" in "physical" disorders. 

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