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**RuttyUttepe** · 08-27-2007, 11:50 PM

Originally posted by Patroklos

And my point is about exaggeration. Of all the problems the world has today, reductionism is not one of them. Grossly magnifying the impact of every occurance is rampant. Reductionism is not minimilization of anything. Reductionism is the belief that you can understand a thing by reducing it to its parts - you can understand a society by looking at inviduals, or human body by looking at cells, or a cell by looking at atoms.

at the lower levels, reductionism can be powerful within limits - molecular biology is great, although the most powerful ideas in biology in biology like evolution were found by looking at animals, not by looking at DNA (that came later). Similarly looking at organizations by analyzing the motives of individuals within them (as economics often does) can be very fruitful, but to pretend an organization is just the sum of papers, and of individual activities, misses a lot. Living things, organizations, societies, are organized things, not just sums of their components, and viewing them as sums of their components will always miss the impact of disruptions to organizations.

And yes, I know that certain forms of non-hierarchal linkage, of which the internet is a good example, reduce the impact of disorganizing events. I dont think we're close to being as far along on that as you imply, and we were less far in 2001.

08-27-2007, 11:50 PM	#10
RuttyUttepe Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 430 Senior Member	Originally posted by Patroklos And my point is about exaggeration. Of all the problems the world has today, reductionism is not one of them. Grossly magnifying the impact of every occurance is rampant. Reductionism is not minimilization of anything. Reductionism is the belief that you can understand a thing by reducing it to its parts - you can understand a society by looking at inviduals, or human body by looking at cells, or a cell by looking at atoms. at the lower levels, reductionism can be powerful within limits - molecular biology is great, although the most powerful ideas in biology in biology like evolution were found by looking at animals, not by looking at DNA (that came later). Similarly looking at organizations by analyzing the motives of individuals within them (as economics often does) can be very fruitful, but to pretend an organization is just the sum of papers, and of individual activities, misses a lot. Living things, organizations, societies, are organized things, not just sums of their components, and viewing them as sums of their components will always miss the impact of disruptions to organizations. And yes, I know that certain forms of non-hierarchal linkage, of which the internet is a good example, reduce the impact of disorganizing events. I dont think we're close to being as far along on that as you imply, and we were less far in 2001.
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