Analysis Of Reductionism In The Field Of Biology

The problem about reductionism is often considered to be the primary problem in the philosophy of biology.As a philosophical proposition,reductionism originates from Democritus atomic theory.Mechanism based on Newtonian mechanics is the typical pattern of it after 17 th Century.The formal study of reductionism started from Descartes.He established the study programme of reductionism from the two dimensions of methodology and epistemology.Newtonian mechanics has laid the theoretical foundation for it from the dimension of science.The thought of modern reductionism has formed gradually on the basis of Descartes’ s thought and Newton theory.The evolution of antireductionism began with Aristotle’s holism,vitalism in 17 th,and all sorts of antireductionism in the sense of ontology and methodology.Finally,the ideas of holism,emergencism are shaking the basic ideas of reductionism fundamentally.It is the core point of biological reductionism to explain all the phenomena of life by physical and chemical methods.There are not mysterious phenomena in nature accordingly.All activities of life are physical or chemical processes,and they obey the laws of physics.It is possible to achieve the unity of science by reducing biology to physics and chemistry.From 17 th Century to 19 th Century,most biologists had become reductionists under the influence of Descartes’ s mechanism and Newton’s physics.Their central view is that organism is a machine,therefore,we must explain the phenomena of life by mechanics.Many biologists adhere to this opinion,such asAntoine-Laurent de Lavoisier,Julien Offroy De La Mettrie,Friedrich W?hler,and Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz.Later scientists learned that it is undesirable to explain biological phenomena by mechanical point of view.Furthermore,Mechanical theory cannot explain the overall behavior of organisms.For this reason,all kinds of antireductionist views began to emerge gradually.Vitalism is the first form of antireductionism.J.Muller and Hans Driesch,famous physiologist and embryologist of German in 19 th,are well-known exponent of vitalism.Ludwig Von Bertalanffy,representative of antireductionism in 20 th,put forward the organicism transcending mechanism and vitalism.Ernst Mayr,David Hull,Stephen Rothman,and Nancy Cartwright supported the opinion of antireductionism.Generally speaking,the focus view of biological antireductionism is that the biological properties cannot be explained by physical and chemical theory,then there are some particular properties in organisms.At present we must recognize that the programme of reductionism dominates present biology,especially after the birth of molecular biology.But more and more evidences indicate the method cannot reduce living organisms to nonliving materials.“Beyond reductionism” has become the important wave in biology and biological philosophy.With the rapid development of information technology,new trends appear in the field of biology.Some theories of systems science are applying in the research of biology,such as systems biology,chaos biology,and information ecology and so on.Systems science are equivalent to classical science,and the former consistent with antireductionism and the latter with reductionism.So we cannot help thinking whether the “Copernicus revolution” will occur or not in the field of biology or the entire science.