Re: Addressing Scientific Reductionism
- From: "Malcolm" <regniztar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 19:05:51 -0500 (EST)
"John Wilkins" <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote
Everyone shrinks from reductionism. I do so myself.
That is a terrible article. It is no more the tenor of reductionism than
the
rather overblown claims of those who call themselves holists. I blame
Koestler
and the New Left writers of the 70s for the misunderstandings.
Reduction is an operation between two levels of description or theories.
If we
have one theory T1 and another T2, then T1 reduces to T2 just in case all
the
entities and processes of T1 can be mapped onto those of T2 (it need not
be a
one to one mapping) without remainder. Generally in science it is regarded
as
a good thing to do (consider how organic chemistry was born), if T2 is
also a
theory of broader scope and explanatory power than T1.
"Genetic reductionism" is not a classical case of reduction of this kind.
Here
T2 is the population genetics that is post-Hamilton and Trivers, and T1 is
the
behavioural descriptions of psychology. As a simple theoretical advance,
Hamiltonian genetics is a useful way to descrtibe and explain some aspects
of
psychology and social behaviour, but it is not more general than
sociological
accounts, and requires a considerable amount of ancillary apparatus to
make it
work (usually in the form of folk psychological rules like "agents seek to
maximise their payoff").
The folk psychology is just the observation that most people act in their
own interests, most of the time. As evolutionary biologists, we add that
these interests are not selfish interests, but reproductive interests.
That's a purely reductionist argument.
One special case of reductionism/nonreductionism lies in the claim that aNot really.
science like biology does or doesn't have its own laws. On this view of
science, having laws in your theories is supposed to be the end goal of
explanation. Others, like myself, think that it is enough to have a domain
specific generalisation, and that these need not be exceptionless. Those
who
think biology must have laws and does so, which are special to biology,
are
nonreductionists.
A bit has the property of being set or clear.
A group of bits can have properties of being parity even, parity odd, mainly
set, mainly clear, and a few more.
When we add ordering to our group of bits, we suddenly get an explosion of
properties.
However the laws of number do in a very real sense reduce to bits being set
or clear.
Similarly, we don't have to deny emergent properties, whilst still holding
that biological organisms are composed of atoms which obey no special
physical laws.
--
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$1.25 download or $6.90 paper, available www.lulu.com
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- References:
- Addressing Scientific Reductionism
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- Re: Addressing Scientific Reductionism
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- Addressing Scientific Reductionism
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