Reductionism

Christophe Malaterre (1)

1 IHPST - Institut d'Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques

Reductionism is a philosophical notion that encompasses a set of ontological, methodological, and epistemological claims about how entities, processes, methods, and knowledge relate to one another across levels of organization and/or scientific domains. Typically, the question is whether such elements at higher levels of organization (i.e., biological) can be deduced from elements at lower levels (i.e., chemical).

Mots clés: Explanatory reduction; inter-theoretic reduction; methodological reduction; ontological reduction

Domaines: Histoire, Philosophie et Sociologie des sciences

Christophe Malaterre. Reductionism. Gargaud, Muriel. Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Springer, pp.1005-1006, 2011. ⟨halshs-00792357⟩