Monday, May 31, 2010 12:55:04 PM
LOL .. reductionism .. it took a few visits ..
Descartes held that non-human animals could be
reductively explained as automata — De homines 1662.
Reductionism can either mean (a) an approach to understanding the nature of complex things by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things or (b) a philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can be reduced to accounts of individual constituents. This can be said of objects, phenomena, explanations, theories, and meanings.
Reductionism strongly reflects a certain perspective on causality. In a reductionist framework, phenomena that can be explained completely in terms of other more fundamental phenomena, are called epiphenomena. Often there is an implication that the epiphenomenon exerts no causal agency on the fundamental phenomena that explain it.
Reductionism does not preclude emergent phenomena, but it does imply the ability to
understand the emergent in terms of the phenomena from and process(es) it emerges from.
Religious reductionism generally consists of explaining religion by boiling it down to certain nonreligious causes. A few examples of reductionistic attempts to explain the presence religion are the view that religion could be reduced to humanity’s conceptions of right and wrong, the belief that religion is fundamentally a primitive attempt at controlling our environments, or the opinion of religion as a way to explain the world around us. Typical religious reductionists are such theorists as Edward Burnett Tylor and James Frazer. Sigmund Freud's idea that religion is nothing more than an illusion, or even a mental illness, and the Marxist view that religion is "the sigh of the oppressed," providing only "the illusory happiness of the people," are two other influential reductionist explanations of religion.
There is a certain degree of reductionism in the social sciences, which often try to explain whole areas of social activity as mere subfields of their own field. As an example, Marxist economists often try to explain politics as subordinated to economy, and sociologists sometimes see economy and politics as mere sub-spheres of society. .. much more .. it's wik! .. rotflmao!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism
Descartes held that non-human animals could be
reductively explained as automata — De homines 1662.
Reductionism can either mean (a) an approach to understanding the nature of complex things by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things or (b) a philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can be reduced to accounts of individual constituents. This can be said of objects, phenomena, explanations, theories, and meanings.
Reductionism strongly reflects a certain perspective on causality. In a reductionist framework, phenomena that can be explained completely in terms of other more fundamental phenomena, are called epiphenomena. Often there is an implication that the epiphenomenon exerts no causal agency on the fundamental phenomena that explain it.
Reductionism does not preclude emergent phenomena, but it does imply the ability to
understand the emergent in terms of the phenomena from and process(es) it emerges from.
Religious reductionism generally consists of explaining religion by boiling it down to certain nonreligious causes. A few examples of reductionistic attempts to explain the presence religion are the view that religion could be reduced to humanity’s conceptions of right and wrong, the belief that religion is fundamentally a primitive attempt at controlling our environments, or the opinion of religion as a way to explain the world around us. Typical religious reductionists are such theorists as Edward Burnett Tylor and James Frazer. Sigmund Freud's idea that religion is nothing more than an illusion, or even a mental illness, and the Marxist view that religion is "the sigh of the oppressed," providing only "the illusory happiness of the people," are two other influential reductionist explanations of religion.
There is a certain degree of reductionism in the social sciences, which often try to explain whole areas of social activity as mere subfields of their own field. As an example, Marxist economists often try to explain politics as subordinated to economy, and sociologists sometimes see economy and politics as mere sub-spheres of society. .. much more .. it's wik! .. rotflmao!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism
Jonathan Swift said, "May you live all the days of your life!"
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