reducionista

Reducionista, in Spanish, refers to a person who defends reductionism. Reductionism is the view that the properties and behaviors of complex systems can be explained in terms of their simpler constituents and the fundamental laws governing those constituents. The term is used chiefly in philosophy of science and in discussions of scientific explanation, with the English equivalent being “reductionist.”

Forms of reductionism include ontological reductionism, which asserts that all entities ultimately reduce to more basic substances or kinds, and methodological reductionism, which argues that explanations should be grounded in lower-level theories, even if higher-level descriptions remain useful for practical purposes.

Historical development of reductionism traces to the successes of physics, chemistry, and early biology, where researchers sought to explain phenomena by appealing to underlying mechanisms. In the 19th and 20th centuries, proponents argued that chemistry could be reduced to physics and that biological processes could be understood through molecular interactions. In psychology and neuroscience, reductionism has taken the form of linking mental states to brain states or neural processes. The approach has been influential across sciences but has also faced sustained criticism.

Critics contend that some phenomena exhibit emergent properties or multiple realizability, making them irreducible to lower-level explanations or requiring different frameworks at various levels of organization. They argue that higher-level theories can be scientifically legitimate and practically indispensable for understanding complex systems. The debate between reductionism and holism remains central in philosophy of science, biology, psychology, and related fields.

See also: reductionism, emergentism, holism, philosophy of science, materialism.