Lesson 7 –
Scientific Evidence Against Reductionism
As scientists have learned to break down organisms into cells, cells into molecules, molecules into atoms, and all the way down to fundamental particles or fields, we seem to get closer to achieving what many scientists and philosophers have believed to be the goal of science, to explain everything in terms of the smallest pieces and parts of nature, and the small collection of laws that govern them. It seems like this complete reduction of nature to fundamental physics, this reductionism, would refute the Thomistic notion of substances and substantial form, since everything would really just be a complex collection of particles or fields or strings. But, the belief that complete reductionism is actually possible has never been more than that — a belief, a hope, a promise, that we’ll figure it out eventually.
Excerpt from Aristotle’s Revenge by Edward Feser:
“[Work] in contemporary philosophy of chemistry casts doubt both on the claim that chemistry affords us reductionist accounts of ordinary substances, and on the claim that physics affords us a reductionist account of chemistry. Indeed, in their Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article surveying the field (2011), Michael Weisberg, Paul Needham, and Robin Hendry speak of an ‘anti-reductionist consensus in the philosophy of chemistry literature.’”
Course Listening
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Understanding the Chemical Aspects of the Aristotelian-Thomistic View | Prof. Thomas McLaughlin
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This episode was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this project are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.
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