engleski

Categories of Reductionism in Molecular Biology

In this paper, I examine theory reductionism in molecular biology. Particularly, the reductive and anti-reductive interpretations concerning Max Delbrück’s complementarity approach. Complementarity in biology indicates that biological phenomena may require the use of mutually exclusive descriptions yet jointly necessary for understanding life processes. I argue for the anti-reductive interpretation concerning Delbrück’s complementarity approach. According to Sarkar (1992: 58), there are three broad categories of reduction, and those are the following: theory reductionism, explanatory reductionism, and constitutive reductionism. These categories are construed broadly, and each category consists of general features. Theory reductionism implies models of reduction that view reduction necessarily as a relation between theories. Explanatory reductionism consists of models of reduction that view reduction as a relation between explanations in the sense that the reduced entity is explained by the reducing one regardless of the fact whether those entities are theories, laws, or generalizations. Constitutive reductionism includes models of reduction holding that the upper-level systems (intuitively larger systems) are composed of lower-level systems (intuitively smaller systems) and correspond to the laws governing the latter systems. For the purposes of this paper, I exclusively examine theory reductionism since the debate whether Delbrück’s complementarity approach should be considered as reductive or anti- reductive, depends on how he perceived the relation between different scientific disciplines, i.e., physics, chemistry, and genetics. On the one side, I present Roll- Hansen’s (2011) reductionist approach towards Delbrück’s research program, and on the other side, I examine McKaughan’s (2011) and Domondon’s (2006) anti-reductive interpretations of the complementarity approach. I advocate the latter interpretation by showing that Delbrück argued for an independent status of explanations of various disciplines, such as for instance genetics, rather than the view which perceives explanations from biology reduced to those from chemistry or physics.

molecular biology ; anti-reductionism ; reductionism ; Delbrück

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