Bewilderment is the antidote to scientific reductionism
1–10 of 41 posts
Re: Bewilderment is the antidote to scientific reductionism
#2One day, in my early twenties, I was feeling sorry for myself (as early-twenty-somethings often do). I began reflecting how love was just a chemical in my head or somesuch self-indulgent nonsense.
And then it hit me -- there's a chemical in my head that makes me fall in love! And I got all excited because -- wow, that is some crazy shit! And what a bizarre, crazy thing it is to be a human and have all this stuff going on inside you that somehow adds, multiplies, and exponentiates to make up who you are.
Re: Bewilderment is the antidote to scientific reductionism
#3Why does scientific reductionism need an antidote?
"antidote to scientific reductionism" seems about as useful as "antidote to nonblindness".
Re: Bewilderment is the antidote to scientific reductionism
#4Why does scientific reductionism need an antidote? "antidote to scientific reductionism" seems about as useful as "antidote to nonblindness".
Because we wouldn't have any concepts of art or beauty or music or many of the things that seem to make life worth living.
Re: Bewilderment is the antidote to scientific reductionism
#5Why does scientific reductionism need an antidote? "antidote to scientific reductionism" seems about as useful as "antidote to nonblindness".
I'd say for the same reason programs need APIs and cars need steering wheels and emotions need words. It's often very helpful to be able to understand the stack all the way down, but there's power in abstraction, and the nature of things changes as they scale while their context remains constant such that by talking about all the component pieces, you might miss the greater whole. Or at least not be able to handle it with any reasonable dexterity.
Re: Bewilderment is the antidote to scientific reductionism
#6Why does scientific reductionism need an antidote? "antidote to scientific reductionism" seems about as useful as "antidote to nonblindness".
Because we wouldn't have any concepts of art or beauty or music or many of the things that seem to make life worth living.
Why would reductionism reduce the majesty of complexity? Cellular automata are about as simple and reductionist as you can get, but they produce breathtaking complexity. Conway's game of life is simply brilliant.
Reduction gives your appreciation new depths.
Re: Bewilderment is the antidote to scientific reductionism
#7One day, in my early twenties, I was feeling sorry for myself (as early-twenty-somethings often do). I began reflecting how love was just a chemical in my head or somesuch self-indulgent nonsense. And then it hit me -- there's a chemical in my head that makes me fall in love! And I got all excited because -- wow, that is some crazy shit! And what a bizarre, crazy thing it is to be a human and have all this stuff goin…
Permission to pep up your language centers?
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/12/20/escape-from-sp...
Re: Bewilderment is the antidote to scientific reductionism
#8Why does scientific reductionism need an antidote? "antidote to scientific reductionism" seems about as useful as "antidote to nonblindness".
I'd say for the same reason programs need APIs and cars need steering wheels and emotions need words. It's often very helpful to be able to understand the stack all the way down, but there's power in abstraction, and the nature of things changes as they scale while their context remains constant such that by talking about all the component pieces, you might miss the greater whole. Or at least not be able to handle it…
>> Why does reductionism need an antidote?
> I'd say for the same reason programs need APIs and cars need steering wheels and emotions need words. It's often very helpful to
Your examples hardly involve antidotes. An antidote is for a poison, and we talk of metaphorical antidotes for things we perceive in a negative light.
I think the person you replied to has a point. I've read a fair bit of philosophy for my PhD work, and I've never come across a criticism of reductionism that seemed to actually understand it. Criticisms of reductionism are always criticisms of a strawman of reductionism.
Both Daniel Dennett (for an overview see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greedy_reductionism), and Steven Weinberg https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/10/05/reductionism-red... (behind a paywall) or his book "Facing Up" have pretty decent descriptions of reductionism.
It's not just that people misunderstand what reductionism itself is, but they also misunderstand what reductionism is and isn't meant to explain. It's not meant to explain or document the characteristics of specific patterns made up of the elements, yet again and again people present the fact that it doesn't explain such details as somehow a fatal flaw in the notion of reductionism.
Re: Bewilderment is the antidote to scientific reductionism
#9Finally something I'm good at!
Re: Bewilderment is the antidote to scientific reductionism
#10I think it's really a rephrasing of "for every question answered / settled, a bunch of new questions pop up", intimately connected to the cycle of experiment->theory->experiment->... so this is really just "science at work"