Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Part 1 An introduction
- Part 2 Homopugnax: the violent species
- Part 3 Homo egoisticus: the selfish species
- Part 4 Homo operans: the greedy species
- Part 5 Homo sapiens: the human species
- 12 The reductionist imperative
- 13 Human communication
- 14 Teaching and tradition
- 15 The question
- Glossary
- Notes
- References
- Name index
- Subject index
12 - The reductionist imperative
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Part 1 An introduction
- Part 2 Homopugnax: the violent species
- Part 3 Homo egoisticus: the selfish species
- Part 4 Homo operans: the greedy species
- Part 5 Homo sapiens: the human species
- 12 The reductionist imperative
- 13 Human communication
- 14 Teaching and tradition
- 15 The question
- Glossary
- Notes
- References
- Name index
- Subject index
Summary
Einstein … was asked whether he thought everything could ultimately be expressed in scientific terms. Einstein replied: ‘Yes, that is conceivable, but it would make no sense. It would be as if one were to reproduce Beethoven's ninth symphony in the form of an air pressure curve.’
The preceding chapters give many examples of interpreting human action by a single principle, such as natural selection or conditional reflexes. Such explanations are commonly called reductionist. Some kind of explanatory reduction is a feature of many branches of science; yet ‘reductionism’ can arouse such ire that it becomes a term of abuse. One reason for the agitation we have already met: reduction sometimes seems to deprive us of freedom of action and to entail rejecting moral principles. ‘A recurrent popular image’, writes Austen Clark,
is that of behavioural science gradually encroaching on the domain of free will, … as scientists find causal explanations of mental illness, deviance, and criminality; … the province of free will and action … must continually shrink under the impact of increased knowledge, finally to disappear with the success of physiological reductionism.… The door is [then] open to increasing technological reorganization of our social institutions. Our moral notions and our system of justice, which are based on the assumption of personal responsibility, would need radical overhaul.
We see below that not only moral abstractions are at issue, but also, still more obviously, practical matters, such as what we regard as acceptable treatments for some kinds of illness.
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- Biology and FreedomAn Essay on the Implications of Human Ethology, pp. 229 - 250Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989