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I would not be so sure. There are many fields where reductionism was applied in practice and it yielded useful results, thanks to computers. Examples that come
by js8 1y ago
I would not be so sure. There are many fields where reductionism was applied in practice and it yielded useful results, thanks to computers.
Examples that come to mind: statistical modelling (reduction to nonparametric models), protein folding (reduction to quantum chemistry), climate/weather prediction (reduction to fluid physics), human language translation (reduction to neural networks).
Reductionism is not that useful as a theory building tool, but reductionist approaches have a lot of practical value.
- gilleain 1y ago> protein folding (reduction to quantum chemistry), I am not sure in what sense folding simulations are reducable to quantum chemistry. There are interesting 'hybrid' approaches where some (limited) quantum calculations are done for a small part of the structure - usually the active site I suppose - and the rest is done using more standard molecular mechanics/molecular dynamics approaches. Perhaps things have progressed a lot since I worked in protein bioinformatics. As far as I know, even extremely short simulations at the quantum level were not possible for systems with more than a few atoms.
- TheAncientGeek 1y agoThat's a practical limitation. There's no barrier in principle to a complete reduction.
- jltsiren 1y agoI meant that the word "reductionist" is usually an accusation of ignorance. It's not something people doing reductionist work actually use.
- nyeah 1y agoBut that common use of the word is ignorant nonsense. So, yes, someone is wrong on the internet. So what?
- jltsiren 1y agoThe context here was a claim that reducibility is usually a goal of intellectual pursuits. Which is empirically false, as there are many academic fields with a negative view of reductionism.