Some natural scientists who like to philosophize prefer the doctrine of reductionism as their philosophical position. This view is that everything in reality is but one kind of thing—there are no real differences, only apparent ones. So, for example, even though it seems like music is different from airline travel, or mice are different from giraffes, or again that a Rembrandt painting is different from the contents of one's trash can, by the reductionist account all these things are the same—atoms, or strings or, to quote a famous passage from All the King's Men, dirt: (Read more...)
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