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Monday, December 4, 2006 - 1:38pmSanction this postReply
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Even the Bible propounds the reductionist thesis when it proclaims we all came from dust and will return to dust, although this implies that for some time we aren't dust.

 
"Well, I aint dust - dusty maybe, but not dust - yet anyhow" [attributed to Mark Twain]

That aside, the question to ask, then, is the quest for a unified view of the universe itself a reductionist notion?


Post 1

Monday, December 4, 2006 - 8:58pmSanction this postReply
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I don't really understand Dr Machan's FMNN editorial. If "Some natural scientists who like to philosophize prefer the doctrine of reductionism," I'd like to know who these scientist/philosphers are . . .

I would like to be able to compare what Machan says they prefer to what they say they prefer. I'd like to see if their adherence to a scientific reductionism means they believe and assert that we humans are nothing but dirt.

In other words, do these unnamed natural scientists promote the idea and attitude claimed in the editorial? Are they influential, have they derailed scientific inquiry, are their findings flawed or incoherent?

Although Machan states that the soi-disant reductionism at issue is contradicted by 'facts,' I am no further along in knowing what the heck is wrong with this reductionism, and who the heck is responsible for it.

(I may be sensitive to this type of claim, since one of my friends can stop a discussion dead by claiming invidious reductionism at work in my arguments. It seems a shibboleth rather than a principled objection)


WSS


(Edited by William Scott Scherk
on 12/04, 9:02pm)


Post 2

Monday, December 4, 2006 - 9:45pmSanction this postReply
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I discussed the matters at length here with Ed.

Post 3

Monday, December 4, 2006 - 11:34pmSanction this postReply
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This essay sort of reminds me of PF Strawson's solution to the Two-Tables problem, where Strawson said that tables can be atoms, electrons, etc. and -- at one and the same time, but in a different respect -- they can be those things on which we eat our dinners.

Reductionists claimed that tables were nothing but atoms configured in a certain sort of way. While the 'non-reductives' claimed that tables were whole things with a specific and defined human purpose. Both were, in a sense, correct -- but not as wholely correct as Strawson, as to when he 'pulled an Aristotle' and said that tables simultaneously exist in at least 2 different senses.

;-)

Ed


Post 4

Tuesday, December 5, 2006 - 4:19amSanction this postReply
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Didn't professor Searl said that a molecule of water does not contain the wetness of the water?

Ciro



Post 5

Tuesday, December 5, 2006 - 6:08amSanction this postReply
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They Might Be Giants wonders the same thing:

Particle man, particle man
Doing the things a particle can
Whats he like? its not important
Particle man

Is he a dot, or is he a speck?
When he's underwater does he get wet?
Or does the water get him instead?
Nobody knows, particle man



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Post 6

Tuesday, December 5, 2006 - 6:42amSanction this postReply
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Phil Anderson, a Nobel laureate in solid state theoretical physics (my old stomping grounds) wrote an article for Science more than thirty years ago.  The title is "More Is Different" (Science 177, 393-396 (1972)) and the opening sentence is:
The reductionist hypothesis may still be a topic for controversy among philosophers, but among the great majority of active scientists I think it is accepted without question.
The paper was a reaction to the attitude of many physicists that basic research is restricted to elementary particle physics or cosmology.  Everything else is applied physics.  He says:
At each level of complexity entirely new properties appear, and the understanding of the new behaviors requires research which I think is as fundamental in its nature as any other.
The summary line that I think is relevant to the topic here is:
The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe.
Another reference is a book entitled A Different Universe.  The author is another Nobel laureate in solid state physics, Robert Laughlin.  (I think solid state physicists have an inferiority complex.)  I haven't read it yet but it addresses the same theme as Anderson's article.  As systems become more complex, some new physics arise (emergent phenomena) that need new explanations. I'll try to write a review when I finish it.

Thanks,
Glenn


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Post 7

Tuesday, December 5, 2006 - 6:56amSanction this postReply
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Thanks, Glenn, for those wonderful Science quotes.

I am a natural scientist and have no idea what Prof. Machan is talking about. He seems to be arguing with a non-existent and imaginary opponent. ;-)

(Edited by Hong Zhang on 12/05, 7:34am)


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Tuesday, December 5, 2006 - 9:47amSanction this postReply
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Here are a couple of more quotes, this time from an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Robert Laughlin and David Pines entitled "The Theory of Everything".
The first quote addresses the concern that Tibor is tilting at windmills:
The fact that the essential role played by higher organizing principles in determining emergent behavior continues to be disavowed by so many physical scientists is a poignant comment on the nature of modern science. ...the idea is considered dangerous and ludicrous, for it is fundamentally at odds with the reductionist beliefs central to much of physics.
And the other explains Hong's response : )
For the biologist, evolution and emergence are part of daily life.  For many physicists, on the other hand, the transition from a reductionist approach may not be easy, but should, in the long run, prove highly satisfying.
Thanks,
Glenn


Post 9

Tuesday, December 5, 2006 - 12:42pmSanction this postReply
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Hahaha, another explanation for my reaction, other than that I am in a inferior discipline (biology), is that I may not be old enough! Some opinions of those die-hard theoretical physicists just sound so outdated. We have known much better now!


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Post 10

Tuesday, December 5, 2006 - 12:52pmSanction this postReply
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... a molecule of water does not contain the wetness of the water ...
Good point, Ciro. I don't actually think it was Searle who initially said so, but it's true: a molecule of water doesn't contain the "wetness" (the "wetness" that we commonly associate with water), it only contains the potentiality for "wetness" -- should several molecules of water conjoin into at least a droplet of water. Wetness, then, is what Glenn has here referred to as an emergent property (a property of molecule[S] of water -- when they are conjoined into droplets).

There is no 'wetness' in a molecule of oxygen that is chemically bonded to 2 hydrogens.

Ed


Post 11

Tuesday, December 5, 2006 - 1:05pmSanction this postReply
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Hong,
I hope I didn't imply anywhere that biology is inferior to physics.  If I did, I didn't intend to.  My wife is a biologist and I wouldn't dare suggest such a thing.  Really.  Honest.
Glenn


Post 12

Tuesday, December 5, 2006 - 2:04pmSanction this postReply
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Glenn,
I didn't assume you intended that for a second. But it is a fun rivalry.

Back in my middle school days,  we did actually consider physics superior. Those who couldn't do math would go to biology, we thought. And the smartest and brightest kids always go to the physics departments. The program established by Chinese American Nobel laureates Yang and Lee to send young physics students to America was also a big draw for many young math prodigies. I was OK with math, but modern biological sciences really took my fancy by the time I entered university. So I chose to study biophysics, still trying to distant myself from other quantitatively challenged biology students. ;-)

Now 20 years later, in US, things are completely different. Jobs and money are all in the fields that have "bio-" in them. I've seen quite a few of those physics prodigies who couldn't find a decent job and had to switch field. Oh, well.

(Edited by Hong Zhang on 12/05, 2:14pm)


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Post 13

Wednesday, December 6, 2006 - 12:46amSanction this postReply
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I don't see a problem with reductionism either. On of the major tasks of physics is trying to reduce the world we see to it's most essential parts and the laws they follow. Personally I believe everything is mater - energy, or 'dust' in the biblical sense. If physics will find one formula explaining gravity, electromagnetisme, strong and weak forces etc, so much the better. The same is true for matter. But what does it mean if everything consists of strings vibrating in 10 dimensions or hobbits dancing in 25? Will this knowledge give us the magic formula to enhance crop yield? Could the discovery of a new particle change the course of the war in Iraq?

Like many posters said, the wetness of water doesn't follow directly from the composition of oxygen and hydrogen atoms,  even less more complex systems like a living organisme or world economy. Knowing the basic make up of our world (the work of physicists) will enable us to make better hypotheses, to discover more precisly emerging laws of different systems. Physics can't give us an answer to 'the question of Life, the Universe and Everything'.  Making conclusions on life, the universe and everything based only on knowledge of elementary particles, is just plain bad reasoning. I think most physicists are aware of this.


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Post 14

Wednesday, December 6, 2006 - 8:22pmSanction this postReply
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As Aristotle observed in the Metaphysics, the whole is more than the sum of its parts:

"In the case of all things which have several parts and in which the totality is not, as it were, a mere heap, but the whole is something besides the parts, there is a cause . . ." (Metaphysics, Book 8, Chapter 4, 1045a).

In his book, The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts, Binswanger argues for what might be considered a form of reductionism, but one which recognizes a distinction between the properties of the whole and of the parts which compose it:

"[I]magine we are presented with two hemispherical pieces of wood, each having a sticky substance on its flat side. Alone, neither hemisphere can roll; when joined to form a sphere, the whole can roll. Rolling is thus an emergent form of action completely determined by the individual separate properties of the parts and their arrangement. Obviously, the whole formed by uniting the two hemispheres is, in a sense, 'greater than its parts' -- but it is just as obvious that this 'extra something' of the whole (its ability to roll) is not to be explained by the supervention of a 'principle of order' or 'entelechy.' There is no 'transcendence' of the natures of the parts or of the laws governing their behavior." (p. 22)

Of course, this view has nothing in common with a reductionism which says that an understanding of the parts is sufficient for an understanding of the whole.

- Bill
(Edited by William Dwyer
on 12/06, 8:26pm)


Post 15

Wednesday, December 6, 2006 - 8:51pmSanction this postReply
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As a methodology, reductionism has been very powerful. Neither chemistry nor biology would be rigorous sciences without atomic or cell theory. But as an ideology (behaviorism, marxist materialism) or without the alternate recognition of emergent properties - order which cannot be meaningfully explained by reference only to the parts, as separate from the form - reductionism is a failure. Ultimately we get the denial of human dignity and the reduction of man to a cog or the victim of his biochemistry.

The scholastic metaphysics is hylomorphism, entities as a unity of material and form. I cannot go into this topic now to the length which it deserves.

The next time you listen to your favorite song, try to pick out just which notes are the ones that make you happy. The project is doomed to failure.

BTW, wetness derives from the properties of the hydrogen and hydroxyl bonds. We don't notice wetness when there is only one molecule present, but the property in this case actually is a property of the molecules themselves. The hydrogen or the oxygen atoms themselves do not have the property of wetness outside of the molecule, as both O2 and H2 are gasses. But most liquids with -OH groups such as alcohols can be described as wet.

Ted

Post 16

Tuesday, December 12, 2006 - 9:13pmSanction this postReply
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     Reductionists analyze a dynamic system to it's components (at whatever level of 'anatomy' one wishes), a-n-d their known inter-actions ('physiology', if you will), whether the inside of a star or a dog. Therein, the elements and their operations, is the 'systemic' explanation for the entity's dynamicness...whether mechanical, or living. In both the latter cases input/intake from environment is necessary for ongoing dynamics. Reductionists can see no distinction. La Mettrie is their intellectual ancestor whether they 'reduct' to behaviour, organs, cells, molecules, atoms, whatnot.

     Non-reductionists see a distinction. Prob is: what is it?


LLAP
J:D

(Edited by John Dailey on 12/12, 9:20pm)


Post 17

Tuesday, December 12, 2006 - 9:33pmSanction this postReply
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"...and their operations"

This is where the reductionist (if he's not just a straight-out denial artist) tries to smuggle in the emergent properties, as if they are somehow hidden in the elements. The simple truth is that some properties derive more from the form than from the element. While the mass of a cannonball derives from the mass of its constituent atoms, the roundness of the cannonball is not a property of the "round" atoms. The fact that a cannonball will roll cannot be predicted from knowledge of the iron atom. The beauty of a symphony is not a property of any of its particular notes. While I assume you, my reader, are conscious, I doubt that any single cell in your brain has the property of consciousness. Certain phenomena can be meaningly described by a reduction to the description of the parts (mass), certain phenomena cannot (roundness).









Post 18

Wednesday, December 13, 2006 - 10:02amSanction this postReply
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     I have no problem considering the concept of 'emergent phenomena' as a factor to consider within any dynamic system. Indeed, decades ago before the term, nm the concept, arose (hmm...'emerged'?), Arthur Clarke implied it in a short story about the world's telephone connections producing thereby a 'consciousness' of sorts.

    But, reductionists/determinists seeing that such appears not as a 'predictability-useable' concept admit such characteristics arise and merely say "Yeah, so? But since they 'explain' nothing, and are findable only empirically...they're irrelevent."

    Such is my understanding.

LLAP
J:D


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Post 19

Sunday, December 24, 2006 - 7:14amSanction this postReply
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Let me address this point here: "One of the major tasks of physics is trying to reduce the world we see to it's most essential parts and the laws they follow." So far as I can tell, physics is supposed to answer the question, "What exists in nature?" If this is achieved by way of reduction, fine, if not, not so fine. What exists isn't determined by some pre-existing methodological requirement.  Furthermore, to the point that "Personally I believe everything is mater - energy, or 'dust' in the biblical sense," I can only suggest that it really isn't what one believes but what is the case that matters.


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