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Jack comments on Reductionism - Less Wrong
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Reductionism is great. The main problem is that by itself it tells us nothing new. Science depends on hypothesis generation, and reductionism says nothing about how to do that in a rational way, only how to test hypotheses rationally. For some reason the creative side of science -- and I use the word "creative" in the generative sense -- is never addressed by methodology in the same way falsifiability is:
http://emergentfool.com/2010/02/26/why-falsifiability-is-insufficient-for-scientific-reasoning/
We are at a stage of historical enlightenment where more and better reductionism is producing marginal returns. To be even less wrong, we might spend more time on the hypothesis generation side of the equation.
Really? I think of reductionism as maybe the greatest, most wildly successful abductive tool in all of history. If we can't explain some behavior or property of some object it tells us one good guess is to look to the composite parts of that thing for the answer. The only other strategy for hypothesis generation I can think of that has been comparably successful is skepticism (about evidence and testimony). "I was hallucinating." and "The guy is lying" have explained a lot of things over the years. Can anyone think of others?