Synonyms for Reductionist:

Usage examples for Reductionist

Famous quotes with Reductionist

• One of the things I have tried to do with this book and with all of them really is avoid that simple, easy, reductionist view of motivation and to show we do things for a complex net of reasons, a real braid of reasons.

  Russell Banks
• In biology the Cartesian view of living organisms as machines, constructed from separate parts, still provides the dominant conceptual framework. Although Descartes' simple mechanistic biology could not be carried very far and had to be modified considerably during the subsequent three hundred years, the belief that all aspects of living organisms can be understood by reducing them to their smallest constituents, and by studying the mechanisms through which these interact, lies at the very basis of most contemporary biological thinking. This passage from a current textbook on modern biology is a clear expression of the reductionist credo: 'One of the acid tests of understanding an object is the ability to put it together from its component parts. Ultimately, molecular biologists will attempt to subject their understanding of cell structure and function to this sort of test by trying to synthesize a cell.

  Fritjof Capra
• Here we encounter what the atheist and philosopher Daniel Dennet calls the "universal solvent" of natural selection. With its reductionist acids it breaks down all larger systems into components and elements and blends, removing purpose, structure, teleology, and creativity.

  Daniel Dennett
• It is a curious paradox that several of the greatest and most creative spirits in science, after achieving important discoveries by following their unfettered imaginations, were in their later years obsessed with reductionist philosophy and as a result became sterile. Hilbert was a prime example of this paradox. Einstein was another.

  Freeman Dyson
• The de-eroticization of the world, a companion to its disenchantment … seems to result from a combination of causes—our democratic regime and its tendencies toward leveling and self-protection, a reductionist-materialist science that inevitably interprets eros as sex, and the atmosphere generated by “the death of God” and of the subordinate god, Eros.

  Allan Bloom

Related words & questions

Related words: reductionist research, reductionist teaching, reductionism in psychology, reductionism in physics, reductionism definition, reductionism art, reductive design

Related questions:

What is reductionism in psychology?

What is a reductionist?

What is a reductive design?

in distress

If you're in need of alternative words for "in distress," don't fret. You can use "in agony" to describe a great deal of physical or emotional pain. If you're feeling overwhelmed o...