Topics Science

Question Woods cut from trees have certain physical properties that a reductionist might claim are expressions of atomic or sub-atomic phenomena (mostly empty space, though we experience wood as hard). Since the tree is alive can reductionism account for the role of organic life in organizing or directing (e.g., cell division) those physical properties? I think that a physicist cannot fully explain the macroscopic properties of wood (e.g., hard) by material reduction without recourse to life sciences that are beyond his/her realm of study. What I am proposing is that reductionism fails via category error when applied to life or consciousness.

Accepted:
July 31, 2014

Comments

I think you raise a great point. This is an area that is much debated, so my response should not be considered the official philosophical position. I think the direction of your thinking is sound. If we are to limit ourselves to the world as described and explained in an ideal physics, there is quite a lot of reality that seems to go missing. Actually, the very practice of physics seems to involve a great deal of phenomena (scientists making observations, constructing theories, exercising reason, and so on) that may not fit in very well with the picture of nature produced by physics (or a philosophy that gives primacy or exclusive authority to physics). Anyway, back to your point, I think you are right that to address living creatures and plants requires the life sciences (minimally). And we will need more to describe and explain events such as you and I writing and reading, and so on (psychological descriptions and explanations...). Of special interest to some, perhaps many philosophers is whether might be "bridge laws" --laws of nature that link what we discover in physics with what we discover in biology. So, some philosophers hold that the most fundamental causal events at the micro-level are so configured that they can account for (or determine) the emergence of what we discover in chemistry, biology, and so on. The danger of a reductive project that would locate causes really at the micro-level and not permit what some call top-down causation (when, say, the hardness of a mature tree might causally explain why the tree is not the host of certain birds) is not itself a robust (or as solid, sorry for the pun) sample of causation. That sounds odd, so let me try one more time:

At the macro level, it appears that you and I do things such as plant trees for, say, ecological reasons. In a common sense way, it seems that such an activity would explain why lots of atomic and sub-atomic particles are shifted about in our world. The reason why all the physical constituents of our bodies moved from an urban area to the country was for reasons. However, if the underlying cause was atomic and sub-atomic, then we are in the odd position of realizing that no atoms or sub-atomic parts reason or have beliefs, desires, and so on. In other words, if our explanations gave primacy to physics, we seem to undermine what appears to be a solid, common sense way of understanding ourselves as agents.