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Essay on Reduction
Reduction refers to the explanation of a theory by a more basic, fundamental one. It is best exemplified by the unification and increased coherence made possible by the kinetic theory of gases.
This succeeded in explaining hitherto mysterious macroscopic phenomena by reducing gases to swarms of microscopic atoms whose behavior is governed by Newton's (1642-1727) laws and laws of statistics, thus incorporating an independent, isolated scientific system into a single, more comprehensible and powerful framework. So the reduction of theories augments our understanding in a special way, producing a single picture of Nature.
In many fields reductionism has proved worthwhile. Biophysics and molecular biology explicitly use physical methods, with the discovery of the molecular structure of the gene achieving what most geneticists only thirty years previously had thought impossible. And so it is not surprising that psychology, in it’s strive to be recognized as a true science, has inherited such a tradition.
Reductionism has proved fruitful in other disciplines, in elucidating the brain-behavior relationships of lower animals, and shows signs of doing the same for the human brain. Why then, should it be declared "intellectually bankrupt"? I shall briefly consider the weaker arguments waged against the reductionism, before turning to the more serious ones......
