The history of reductionism

versus holistic approaches to

scientific research
Hanne Andersen

For centuries, reductionism has been the subject of much discussion among scientists and philosophers, and
has come to be an integral part of modern science. In its strongest form the world may be seen as a series
of reductive levels: social groups, multicellular living things, cells, molecules, atoms, and finally as the
smallest parts the elementary particles. In contrast, holism, in the form of systems theories, builds on the
idea that systemic relations arising at complicated stages of integration may produce new and unpredictable
characteristics of the system. This paper presents a brief historical overview, and explains some of the basic
distinctions which are necessary in analyzing what reductionism is all about.

Reductionist debates are about whether specific scientific
entities, concepts or relations can replace other entities,
concept or relations. Attempts at such reductions from
one area of inquiry to another has been an integral part of
much modern science. For example, the development of
the mechanical philosophy in the late 17th century was an
attempt to explain a wide range of physical phenomena
such as optics in terms of mechanical models. Likewise,
by the end of the 19th century physicists worked on de-
riving the laws governing the thermodynamics of ideal
gases from the mechanical behaviour of the constituent
molecules of these gases.
Efforts to explain phenomena related to aggregates of
some sort in terms of the parts by which the aggregates
are formed has been a recurrent tendency. In its strongest
form the world may be seen as a series of reductive levels
(social groups, multicellular living things, cells, molecules,
atoms, and finally as the smallest parts the elementary
particles) where it is expected that the laws at one level
can be reduced to laws at the lower level; a subclass of re-
ductions which has been termed micro-reductions. Strong
adherents of the Unity of Science idea, which was advanced
by logical positivists in the 1930s and maintained until
the late 1950s, stressed the transitive and cumulative
character of micro-reductions, as for example Oppenheim
and Putnam in their 1958 paper ‘Unity of Science as a
Working Hypothesis’:
It is not absurd to suppose that psychological laws may
eventually be explained in terms of the behavior of individ-
ual neurons of the brain; that the behavior of individual cells
– including neurons – may eventually be explained in terms
of their biochemical constitution; and that the behavior of
molecules – including the macro-molecules that make up
living cells – may eventually be explained in terms of atomic
physics1.
For these authors the assumption that unitary science could
be attained through cumulative micro-reduction recom-
mended itself as a working hypothesis, although they
would not claim that the truth of this hypothesis had been
established, or deny that success might finally elude us.
However, other scholars at other times have just as
whole-heartedly rejected reduction. By the mid-19th
century, the British philosopher John Stuart Mill argued
that the properties of molecules could not be derived
from the properties of the constituent elements:
…the chemical combination of two substances produces, as
is well known, a third substance with properties different
from those of either of the two substances separately or of
both of them taken together. Not a trace of the properties of
hydrogen or of oxygen is observable in those of their com-
pound, water2.
Likewise, Mill denied that the phenomenon of life could
be derived from the constituents of the living body:
To whatever degree we might imagine our knowledge of the
properties of the several ingredients of a living body to be
extended and perfected, it is certain that no mere summing
up of the separate actions of those elements will ever
amount to the action of the living body itself3.

Hanne Andersen A few decades later, another British philosopher, George

Is Assistant Professor at the Dept. of Medical Philosophy and Clinical
Henry Lewes, introduced the term emergence to describe
Theory at the University of Copenhagen. Her research concerns the effects that, although being the resultant of its compo-
development of science, especially conceptual change in the devel-
opment of science, the development of scientific disciplines, and
nents, could not be reduced to the sum of these4. How-
scientific realism. ever, Lewes also noted that whether we call an effect

0160-9327/01/$ – see front matter © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S0160-9327(00)01387-9 Endeavour Vol. 25(4) 2001 153
 emergent depends upon our current theories. Thus, in the
case of water, Lewes imagined that we might one day be
able to account for the process by which oxygen and
hydrogen result in water, but until then we would have to
consider the properties of water as emergent.
But the history of reductionism is not just a reflection of
the history of science. Admittedly, science has developed
links between areas of inquiry at different times in the
history of science, for example between classical thermo-
dynamics and statistical mechanics in the late 19th century,
and between chemical laws governing valence and bonds
and atomic physics in the first half of the 20th century, or
between classical genetics and molecular biology in the
late 20th century. Nevertheless, many philosophical dis-
cussions remain on the nature of the established links as
well as on the strength of arguments against the existence
of such links.
Some basic distinctions
Discussions on the possible reduction of one area of
inquiry to another have differed widely in their basic
claims as well as in their terminology.
Some discussions have addressed the question of onto-
logical reduction, i.e. whether the entities of one domain
are composed of the entities of another domain. An im-
portant example of this type of debate is the debate from
the beginning of the 20th century on whether all biologi-
cal entities are composed entirely of physicochemical
entities, or if (as for example, the biologist Driesch5 and
other vitalists argued) there are special forces that are
peculiar to living entities. Another important example is
the debate from the mid- and late 20th century on whether
mental events are just brain processes, as argued by Feigl6
and Smart7,8 among others.
Other discussions have addressed the question of
epistemological reduction, that is, whether the laws or
theories of one domain can be derived from the laws
or theories of another domain. Examples of this are whether
the laws of thermodynamics can be derived from the laws
of statistical mechanics, or whether the laws of classical
mechanics can be derived from the laws of the relativity
theory9.
Another distinction between types of reduction pertains
to the object domains involved in the reductive relation.
Successive reduction (also described as diachronic
reduction, homogenous reduction, or domain-preserving
reduction) is a reductive relation between historically suc-
cessive theories addressing the same object domain, for
example classical mechanics and the theory of relativity.
Interlevel reduction (also described as synchronic deduction,
heterogenous reduction, or domain-combining reduction)
is a reductive relation between theories that address object
domains at different levels of complexity, for example the
level of biological organisms and the level of molecules.
Usually, the theory that is reduced to another is called the
secondary theory, whereas the reducing theory is called
the primary theory. However, it is important to note that
regarding successive reduction, scientists’ use of the term
reduction is in some cases the opposite of that of philoso-
phers. Philosophers usually speak of reducing less
154 Endeavour Vol. 25(4) 2001
fundamental theories to more fundamental ones and would
therefore (for example, in discussing classical mechanics
and the theory of relativity) discuss the reduction of the
former to the latter. Scientists, on the contrary, discuss the
same case by saying that under certain circumstances,
velocities much smaller than the velocity of light, the
special theory of relativity reduces to classical mechanics.
The standard model of reduction
Contemporary philosophical discussions of reduction
originate in the analyses of the formal conditions for re-
duction carried out by the logical empiricist Ernest Nagel
in his 1949 essay ‘The Meaning of Reduction in the
Natural Sciences’10 and his book The Structure of Science
from 196111.
According to Nagel’s model, reduction is “the expla-
nation of a theory or set of experimental laws established
in one area of inquiry, by a theory usually though not
invariably formulated for some other domain”12. Expla-
nation should here be understood according to the
deductive-nomological model favoured by logical empiri-
cists, that is, as a logical deduction of the explanandum
from a set of premises containing general laws of nature
as well as statements on initial conditions.
However, to logically derive the laws of the secondary
theory from the primary theory plus initial conditions is
impossible in those cases where the secondary theory
contains terms that do not occur in the primary theory.
Therefore, Nagel introduced two conditions which had to
be met in these specific instances.
First, for every term in the secondary science that does
not occur in the primary science, an assumption must be
introduced that links the term in question to terms from
the primary science. For example, to be able to reduce
classical thermodynamics to statistical mechanics it is
necessary to link the term ‘temperature’ that occurs only
in thermodynamics with terms from statistical mechanics.
This is the condition of connectability.
Second, given these assumptions (or bridge laws or
connective principles as they are often called), the laws of
the secondary science must be logically derivable from
the primary science. This is the condition of derivability.
Although various points of criticism has been raised
against Nagel’s model – most notably that it may be
impossible to formulate a manageable set of relations
between the individual terms of the two theories13, and
that the two theories may be logically incompatible, which
excludes that the one can be logically derived from the
other14 – it has remained the principal reference point in
philosophical discussions of reduction.
Holism
Rejections of reductionism have never developed as
systematically as the models for reduction. This is due to
the asymmetry inherent in the reductionist debate: argu-
ments in favour of reductionism can be construed as
existence claims, proving that a certain reductive relation
between two areas of inquiry exists. Arguments in favour
of anti-reductionism, on the contrary, have to be con-
strued as impossibility claims, showing that any attempt
to establish a reductive relation between two areas of
inquiry are bound to fail15.
A frequently invoked term in rejections of reductionism
is holism. This term was originally introduced by the
South African statesman Jan Christiaan Smuts16 as a
contribution to the philosophy of biology17. Smuts wanted
to argue against reductionism without (as the vitalists had
before him) introducing separate, immaterial substances
and the problematic interaction between material and
immaterial substances which the introduction of such
substances imply. Instead, Smuts argued that a unity of
parts could be so…
close and intense as to be more than the sum of its parts;
which not only gives a particular conformation or structure
to the parts, but so relates and determines them in their syn-
thesis that their functions are altered; the synthesis affects
and determines the parts, so that they function towards the
‘whole’18.
Since the 1940’s similar ideas have been advanced within
biology, sociology and several other sciences in the form
of systems theories, which build on the idea that systemic
relations arising at complicated stages of integration may
produce new and unpredictable characteristics of the
system.
Ever since its introduction by Smuts, the term holism
has come to mean a multitude of things, not all of them
consonant with its original meaning. For example, in
debates on conventional versus complementary medicine,
holism is often used to denote most if not all of comple-
mentary medicine, including practices based on immaterial
principles such as ‘Qi’ or ‘vital energy’ as they apply to
qi gong and acupuncture, or practices that explain all
diseases by recourse to one underlying principle, such as
obstacles to the free flow of ‘innate intelligence’ in the
spine (orthodox chiropractics as originally developed by
Palmer).
Some contemporary debates on reductionism
Within recent decades, the philosophical part of the re-
ductionist debate has largely focused on the possible
reductions of mind states to brain states, and on the
possibility of reducing biology to a chemical level, es-
pecially the reduction of Mendelian genetics to molecular
biology.
But reductionism is also an important topic within
many other scientific disciplines. For example, re-
ductionism is a recurrent issue within medicine. A
prominent debate is on whether diseases can be reduced
to biology (often termed the biomedical view of disease),
or if such a reduction is not possible. According to the
biomedical view, diseases can be reduced to physio-
logical disturbances; a view that originates in the French
pathoanatomical school from the late 18th and early
19th century. Within the past two centuries, large parts of
medicine have focused on clarifying the pathogenesis
underlying a given disease, thus obtaining an expla-
nation in biological terms of the disease process and
its manifestations.
However, since the 1970s a popular, anti-reductionist
counter argument based on a general systems theory per-
spective has been that all levels of organization (social,
psychological and biological) are linked to each other so
that changes in one affect changes in the other. According
to this view, the rules responsible for the collective order
of a system cannot be understood merely by character-
izing the components within each level, but needs to
include system characteristics as well. On this basis,
social, psychological and biological approaches have to
be reconciled with an integrated biopsychosocial model
of disease.
In recent years, a specific debate has emerged with the
development of the Human Genome Project. The appli-
cation of the techniques of molecular biology to problems
of human diseases has led to intense discussions on
whether diseases such as schizophrenia, special forms of
cancer, or complex behaviour patterns like alcoholism
or homosexuality can be fully explained by theories of
molecular genetics alone. These discussions involve the
standard arguments known from other discussions of
reduction. Similar to the traditional argument that it may
be impossible to formulate a manageable set of relations
between the individual terms of primary and secondary
theory, it has been argued that for several if not most dis-
eases the reduction to molecular mechanisms is so com-
plex that it is virtually impossible to achieve in practice19.
Many of the discussions on whether medicine can
ultimately be reduced to molecular biology have not been
confined to medical doctors, molecular biologists, or
philosophers, but have become part of the public debate
as well. In these discussions reductionism has become
a heavily loaded term. An affective tone has become a
general problem of most reductionist debates. And one of
the leading philosophers within the philosophy of mind
community, Jaegwon Kim, describes the current situation
as follows:
Expressions like ‘reduction’, ‘reductionism’, ‘reductionist
theory’, and ‘reductionist explanation’ have become pejora-
tives not only in philosophy, on both sides of the Atlantic,
but also in the general intellectual culture of today. They
have become common epithets thrown at one’s critical tar-
gets to tarnish them with intellectual naivete and backward-
ness. To call someone ‘a reductionist’, in high-culture press
if not in serious philosophy, goes beyond mere criticism or
expression of doctrinal disagreement; it is to put a person
down, to heap scorn on him and his work20.
However, in the heat of the debate, the issue of
reductionism often gets conflated with other philo-
sophical issues. For example, in the discussion of
conventional versus complementary medicine, conven-
tional medical doctors are occasionally accused of
reductionism because they do not treat each patient as a
unique individual. However, what this allegation ex-
presses is scepticism against any form of classification
as such, while it does not necessarily involve re-
ductionism in the standard philosophical meaning of
the term.
Endeavour Vol. 25(4) 2001 155
 Questions on whether specific scientific entities, con-
cepts or relations can be reduced to other entities, concepts
or relations, whether new or old, are natural questions for
science to pose. Answering the questions demands
stringency in specifying both what is reduced, what it is
reduced to, and what the reductive relation implies.
Notes and references
1 Oppenheim, P. and Putnam, H. (1958) Unity of science as a
working hypothesis. In Concepts, Theories, and the Mind-
Body Problem (Feigl, H., Scriven, M. and Maxwell, G., eds.),
Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. II,
pp. 3–36, on p. 7, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
2 Mill, J.S. (1843/1973) A System of Logic, reprinted 1973,
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, p. 371
3 Ibid., p. 371f.
4 Lewes, G.H. (1874/1875) Problems of Life and Mind, vol. 1–2,
London: Trübner & Co, Ludgate Hill. Mill had introduced a
similar notion, heteropathic effects, in his 1843 A System of
Logic. Although Mill’s chapter ‘On the Composition of
Causes’ is often cited as the origin of the notion of emergence,
it is Lewes’ term ‘emergence’ introduced in his 1875
Problems of Life and Mind that has become dominant in
later discussions of anti-reductionism. On the development
of the concept of emergence, see Stephan, A. (1992)
Emergence – A Systematic View on its Historical Facets. In
Emergence or Reduction? Essays on the Prospects of
Nonreductive Physicalism (Beckermann, A., Flohr, H. and
Kim, J., eds.), Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 25–48
5 Driesch, H. (1908) The Science and Philosophy of the
Organism, London: A.C. Black.
6 Feigl, H. (1958) The ‘Mental’ and the ‘Physical’. In Scientific
Explanation, Space, and Time (Feigl, M. and Maxwell, G.,
eds), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 3,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 370–497
7 Smart, J.C. (1959) Sensations and Brain Processes, Phil.
Rev. 68:141–156
8 For an overview of the biology debate see e.g. Schaffner,
K.F. (1993) Discovery and Explanation in Biology and
Medicine, Chicago: University of Chicago Press; for an
overview of the mind debate see e.g. Kim, J. (2000) Mind in
a Physical World. An Essay on the Mind-Body Problem and
Mental Causation, Cambridge MA: MIT Press
9 The distinction between ontological and epistemological
reduction has been introduced by Ayala, F.J. (1974)
Introduction, in Studies in the Philosophy of Biology.
Reductionism and Related Problems (Ayala, F.J. and
Bobzhansky, T., eds.), Berkeley: University of California
Press, pp. vii–xvi. Ayala also distinguishes a third kind of
reduction, methodological reduction which concerns the
strategy of research, for example, whether in the study of
biology we should always proceed by investigating the
underlying processes, or if we must study higher as well as
lower levels of organization.
156 Endeavour Vol. 25(4) 2001
10 Nagel, E. (1949) The Meaning of Reduction in the Natural
Sciences, in Science and Civilization (Stauffer, R.C., ed.),
Madison, pp. 99ff.
11 Nagel, E. (1961): The Structure of Science. Problems
in the Logic of Scientific Explanation, Indianapolis:
Hackett, especially chapter 11: ‘The Reduction of
Theories’.
12 Ibid., p. 338
13 Within biology Hull and Rosenberg are among the main
proponents of this view, see Hull, D. (1974) Philosophy
of Biological Science, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall; Rosenberg, A. (1985) The Structure of Biological
Science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Due to
Hull’s argument that phenomena characterized by a single
Mendelian predicate term can be produced by several
different types of molecular mechanisms and that the
same types of molecular mechanism can produce
phenomena that must be characterized by different
Mendelian terms, hence the relations between Mendelian
predicates and molecular mechanisms are many-many
relations, the argument is known as the many-many
argument. In the philosophy of mind Putnam argued in a
similar vein that mental states may have many different
biological realizations and that, consequently, no mental
state can be identified with any single biological state, see
Putnam, H. (1975) The nature of mental states. In Mind,
Language and Reality: Philosophical Papers Volume 2,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 429–440.
This argument has become known as the multiple
realization argument.
14 Feyerabend, P.K. (1962) Explanation, Reduction, and
Empiricism, in Scientific Explanation, Space, and Time
(Feigl, M. and Maxwell, G., eds), Minnesota Studies in the
Philosophy of Science, Vol. III, Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, pp. 28–97
15 Hoyningen-Huene, P. (1992) On the Way to a Theory of
Antireductionist Arguments, in Emergence or Reduction?
Essays on the Prospects of Nonreductive Physicalism
(Beckermann, A., Flohr, H. and Kim, J., eds.), Berlin: de
Gruyter, pp. 289–301
16 Smuts, J.C. (1926/1953): Holism and Evolution, reprinted
1953, London: Greenwood Press.
17 Although the term “holism” was introduced by Smuts, the
thesis has much earlier predecessors. For example, similar
views on the organism as a whole was advanced half a
century earlier by the French physiologist Claude Bernard
in 1865; Bernard, C. (1865/1976): Introduction à l’étude de
la médicine expérimentale, reprinted 1976 (Cranfield, P.F.,
ed.), New York: Science History Publications
18 Op. cit. (note 16), p. 86
19 For a discussion of this and other arguments for and against
the reduction of psychiatric diseases to molecular biology,
see Harris, H.W. & Schaffner, K.F. (1992) Molecular
genetics, reductionism, and disease concepts in psychiatry,
J. Med. Philos. 17(2):127-53
20 Kim, op. cit. (note 8), p. 89