The Trouble with Reductionism
Does Nature favour the discrete and individual?
Is material reality one that is composed of and which can be reduced to the existence and interaction of discrete particles?
I think both questions must be answered in the affirmative. However, I think there is more to these questions than at first may be apparent.
Modern science (as far as I can glean) has certainly found that reducing matter (the ‘stuff’ of which the phenomena of our experience is composed) to particles and thence, subatomic particles, is useful in building a consistent scientific worldview, with all the subsequent uses and benefits derived from this. Nature therefore does favour the discrete. At the same time, this question itself does assume an entity called Nature for which favouring discrete phenomena can be designated as a characteristic.
Obviously I don’t , and the question doesn’t , imply belief in some ‘thing’ called Nature existing apart from it’s discrete phenomena, but it certainly does imply a field where these phenomena can be presented in relation to each other, in other words, a unifying field of existence-in-relation. In other words, the World. This is simply a basic fact of our experience. The second question also contains a significant assumption; ‘is material reality one …:
That our bodies, our brains, our sense organs and the dynamics of our perceptions can be broken down and analysed into a picture of processes involving the interactions of these discrete particles does not in fact move beyond a reformulation of sensory abstractions from this basic experience of ours. When physical science shows us such dazzling and useful reconstructions of the structure of material existence, this is undoubtedly both reliable and relatively true, while at the same time inextricably connected to our own presence. The scientific worldview is inseparable from the scientist(s). Thus, a scientific worldview is part of a holistic system of reality, but not the entire reality.
Of course reality encompasses a plurality. The universe and our experience of, in, and as the universe, are an incredible manifold; myriad phenomena appearing, interacting, conditioning, transforming, disappearing, reappearing. A scene of total dynamism to put it in Dogen-influenced terms.
And yet it is also a unity. Every phenomenon, every instant, is bound on, in, and as this one reality where each particular – even apparently the most basic subatomic particle- is necessarily related to, and thus dependent in the most fundamental way on- absolutely everything else.
Science is a tool as powerful and reliable as our human intellect. I value and trust science even as I value my own intelligence. But human intelligence is inseparable from human beings. It is shaped, conditioned, and directed according to our desires and interests. Moreover, it is an instrument for understanding the relations between phenomena. It is a particular instrument with a particular function (and, ironically, also a ‘particularising’ instrument!). However, regarding our experience, our existence itself, how to live, how to relate to the ‘ultimate’ reality, it can offer hints perhaps , but it can tell us nothing determinate. That requires a different kind of thinking.