Abstract
I am overpowered by a feeling of déjà vu verging at times on the very edge of intellectual impotence. ‘Reductionism’ ‘antireductionism’; ‘beyond reductionism’; ‘holism’. We have seen these words and heard the accompanying arguments so many times before. The issue is a very old one, recurring in various forms with unfailing regularity throughout biological history, and the feeling of impotence arises because, after all this time, the issue never seems to get any clearer. The arguments remain fuzzy round the edges while the actual progress of biological and medical research continues regardless of cries of ‘nothing buttery’ as opposed to ‘greater than the sum of the individual parts’. David Newth’s (1969) question ‘Need a scientist’s philosophical linen be as clean as his laboratory glassware?’ is apparently well taken. The arguments for reductionism and antireductionism seem irrelevant to what is actually done in the laboratory, mere echoes from the sidelines whose impact and influence are effectively nil.
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Goodfield, J. (1974). Changing Strategies: A Comparison of Reductionist Attitudes in Biological and Medical Research in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. In: Ayala, F.J., Dobzhansky, T. (eds) Studies in the Philosophy of Biology. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-01892-5_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-01892-5_6
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