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timtyler comments on Reductionism - Less Wrong
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a) - good; b) - not needed. (Ref for a and b: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism)
Reductionism and Holism should be the names of strategies for analysing complex sysytems by reducing them to the interactions of their parts - or considering them as high-level entities - respectively.
The other terminology - the kind used in this post - is very bad. People should not overload such useful terminology - unless there really is no other way.
One windmill I try to avoid attacking is the dictionary. I would suggest you spend a few extra syllables and refer to a. as "methodological reductionism" and b. as "philosophical (or ontological) reductionism". I understand the badness of needless overloading, but I'm not sure I agree that b. is "useless" simply because its validity is obvious to you. Would you also advocate abandoning the term "atheism"?
My problem with philosophical reductionism is I don't know whether it is a claim about the territory or a convention about maps. If it is a claim about the territory, I certainly remain unconvinced, having not yet glimpsed the territory.
One can't just let dictionary authors rule language. When they get scientific things wrong, responsible individuals should put up a fight. Look at what is happening to "epigenesis" - for example. Or "emergence".