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Reductionism in Philosophy describes a number of related, contentious theories that hold, very roughly, that the nature of complex things can always be Reduced to (explained by) simpler or more fundamental things. This is said of Object s, Phenomena , Explanation s, Theories , and Meaning s. Roughly, this means that and Sociobiology versus those who claim that such special sciences are inherently irreducible. Reductionists believe that the behavioral sciences should become a "genuine" scientific discipline by being based on genetic biology, and on the systematic study of culture (cf. Dawkins's concept of Memes ). A very typical reductionistic book is '' The Selfish Gene '' by Richard Dawkins . It argues that because Gene s are the fundamental elements of life, all life and all natural Behavior can best be understood by studying genetic mechanisms. This way all life is best regarded as temporary accommodation and a reproduction device for the genes. In his book '' out of a window, his fall can be explained by Classical Mechanics . But you should not try to understand his work from such elementary principles. There are several generally accepted types or forms of reduction in both science and philosophy:
The denial of reductionist ideas is Holism ; the idea that things can have properties as a whole that are not explainable from the sum of their parts. Phenomena such as Emergence and work within the field of Complex Systems theory are considered to bring forth possible Objection s to reductionism. Outside the field of strictly philosophical discourse, the best known denial of reductionism is Religious Belief , which, in most of its forms, assigns supernatural or metaphysical original causes to phenomena. In this approach, even if a given system operates by a reductionistic cause-and-effect chain, its "true" genesis and placement within larger systems is bound up with an intelligence beyond normal human perception. SEE ALSO REFERENCES
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