Reductionism in the Philosophy of Science

Sachse, Christian

doi:10.1515/9783110323320

Cited by 21 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…It can function as a GPoS but not in the conventional or traditional way of approaching the unity of science. Traditionally, the unity of science depended on a reduction of the various sciences, such as the behavioral, biological, and chemical sciences, to the physical sciences [51]. In other words, physics served as the template for what constitutes a science; and the non-physical sciences had to be expressed ultimately or at least potentially in physical terms, concepts, and theories.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolutionary Philosophy of Science: A New Image of Science and Stance towards General Philosophy of Science

Marcum

2017

Philosophies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

An important question facing contemporary philosophy of science is whether the natural sciences in terms of their historical records exhibit distinguishing developmental patterns or structures. At least two philosophical stances are possible in answering this question. The first pertains to the plurality of the individual sciences. From this stance, the various sciences are analyzed individually and compared with one another in order to derive potential commonalities, if any, among them. The second stance involves a general philosophy of science in which a thorough theory of the natural sciences is developed. The latter stance strives to account for more than possible commonalities among the sciences but also to provide a broad-spectrum philosophical framework to account for, or to explicate, the nature of science itself and its progress. In this paper, the second stance is taken in which an evolutionary philosophy of science is proposed. To that end, Thomas Kuhn's evolutionary philosophy of science is initially discussed and critiqued. An evolutionary philosophy of science is then proposed based on a revision of Kuhn's evolutionary philosophy of science in terms of George Gaylord Simpson's various tempos and modes for biological evolution. Next, two historical case studies from the biological sciences are reconstructed to illustrate the robustness of the proposed evolutionary philosophy of science for explicating the progress of the natural sciences. A concluding section discusses the proposed evolutionary philosophy of science with respect to providing a broad-spectrum framework or general philosophy of science for understanding the nature and progress of the natural sciences.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolutionary Philosophy of Science: A New Image of Science and Stance towards General Philosophy of Science

Marcum

2017

Philosophies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Therefore, to even conceive that some parts of the organism can somehow be 'hived off' from the whole and treated separately from others reflects an inaccurate perception of what a living organism is, and how it functions in reality. It reveals a phenomenal blindness to this reality, which largely stems from adopting the reductionist approach so favoured in mainstream sciences like chemistry, biology and engineering [76][77][78][79].…”

Section: Treatmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this important respect, homeopathy differs very sharply from allopathic medicine, which adopts a far more analytical and teleological approach to the patient. It analyses the symptoms of the patient in an attempt to find chains of causes which has become typical of the whole of natural science, upon which allopathy claims to be based [76][77][78][79].…”

Section: Treatmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Homeopathy and Cancer – Some Conceptual Issues

Morrell¹

2018

obm icm

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper explores some of the conceptual issues that arise when comparing homeopathy with the mainstream medical system, both in terms of their underpinning philosophies and in their treatment methods, and especially when applied to the problem of cancer. A review is under-taken of the key concepts that underpin both medical approaches: the holistic approach of homeopathy and the reductionist approach of mainstream medicine. The article closes with a discussion of the emerging conflicts between classical homeopathy and the Banerji protocols.

show abstract

“…Since the matter is quite crucial for what follows, let me be more precise on multiple realization and the interpretation of it. In order to avoid letting biological properties slide into epiphenomena, biological property types are taken to be biological concepts (see Esfeld's contribution to this volume, Sachse 2007 andSachse 2007, ch. 2).…”

Section: The Challenge Of Multiple Realizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, once again simplifying in order to illustrate the idea, B 1 may be the conjunction of the gene tokens that express the protein in question (like all gene tokens coming under B) and the consideration of a certain time index of the protein production or the corresponding probabilities on fitness contributions, distinguishing it from gene tokens coming under B 2 ). This more precise rendering of sub-concept B 1 may be written as "B and production of the characteristic effect X in t 1 " or "B and probability function C 1 of fitness contribution", while the sub-concept B 2 may be something like "B and production of the characteristic effect X in t 2 " or "B and probability function C 2 of fitness contribution" (see Sachse 2007, chapter 4 to 7, for a detailed case study of the reduction of classical to molecular genetics along these lines).…”

Section: The Challenge Of Multiple Realizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conservative Reduction of Biology

Sachse

2011

philos nat

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The paper argues in favour of a reductionist strategy in the philosophy of biology in order to maintain the unity of science. After considering the problems in the current state of the philosophy of science that beset both the anti-reductionist and reductionist camps, I design a conservative, non-eliminativist, alternative reductionist strategy based on the theoretical possibility of constructing functionally defined sub-concepts in biology that are nomologically coextensive with physical descriptions. This theoretical link between biology and physics makes it possible to understand the original and operational biological concepts as abstractions from these biological sub-concepts. Thus, in a sense, we can 'serve two masters', preserving the fundamental role of physics while allowing biology its proper sphere of explanatory autonomy, and thus its scientific character. Since this abstraction step is an intra-theoretic one, the scientific quality of the original biological concepts can be vindicated because both epiphenomenalism and eliminativism are avoided, a result that is not available in standard reductionist or antireductionist approaches. Against this background, we can argue furthermore that biological kinds are natural ones and that biology adumbrates laws and explanations of different degrees of abstraction. * Special thanks to Michael Esfeld, Patrice Soom, the participants of the workshop on "Reduction, explanation and metaphors in the philosophy of mind" (Bremen, September 2009), those of the "European advanced seminar in philosophy of life science" (Geneva, September 2010) and the anonymous reviewer for constructive comments on this paper.

show abstract

Reductionism in the Philosophy of Science

Cited by 21 publications

References 0 publications

Evolutionary Philosophy of Science: A New Image of Science and Stance towards General Philosophy of Science

Evolutionary Philosophy of Science: A New Image of Science and Stance towards General Philosophy of Science

Homeopathy and Cancer – Some Conceptual Issues

Conservative Reduction of Biology

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About