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Reductionism - Dangers to Navigate
Topic: Reductionism
by Tony, 2021 Cohort
Notwithstanding the importance and accessibility of reductionism, the shortcomings and inherent weaknesses within the technique must be noted. There are two of primary consequence:
- The loss of information in the process of reduction
- Question centrality
Inherent within reducing complexity, is the loss of some information - otherwise, there would be no reduction occurring, merely a re-packaging of the information. Consequential to this loss of information is that the ‘reduced’ form may have numerous defects associated with it. Indeed, there are limits to reduction, dependent on the question being asked, and reduction beyond this point would lead to a misrepresented understanding rather than simply a reduced one.
The point this occurs, as contended by Randall Firestone, when there is relevant information that is excluded for a correct understanding of its nature, causing an incapacity to understand and explain. This is humorously demonstrated if one considers a duck being reduced to that of the image (which was real). At that point, one’s understanding of a ‘duck’ is now actively hampered rather than aided. Thus, if one wishes to convey complex information, they can practically test whether information has been oversimplified by asking if the representation is accurate to its true nature. However, this is difficult when one does not have such an understanding and requires some reduction to learn.
Question centrality#
Reductionism, particularly of the descriptive kind is a relatively straightforward task when deployed against complex systems that nominally have some function. However, it becomes substantially more difficult for non-functional systems - such as poverty. Consider the following example of poverty, when reduced through a description: the function of such a broad scale ‘reductionism’ is questionable, it acts most obviously on people’s livelihoods, but also upon policy considerations and how society interacts. The inputs of poverty are varied and wide, including the nominal ‘functions’ of poverty, but can range from human-nature to geography. Similarly, the physical constitution of poverty is equally elusive, being made of people, government policy, the environment, the economy and so forth.
The understanding and perspective one seeks from reducing is paramount to how one does the reduction. The poverty example highlights the importance of ‘question centrality’, where reduction to understanding must have a purpose of understanding. Otherwise, to accurately describe the matter as above has effectively no reductive value on the complexity, being equally complex before and after. However, when targeted with a question, for instance, to understand poverty’s historical influences on a nation’s infrastructure policy, then poverty’s function, inputs, and constituent components do not remain as amorphous or elusive.
Consequently, it must be remembered reduced representations made for one purpose inherently cannot be transferred easily or without modification to serve another purpose. Just as GDP is representative of a few features, it is unwise to employ such a metric outside those confined purposes. Indeed, this is very reason why there various methods of calculating GDP (e.g. nominal vs real GDP) reflects the various questions that each synthetic variable seeks to answer.
- Randall S Firestone, ‘Oversimplification in Philosophy’ (2019) 9(3) Open Journal of Philosophy 396.
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Notwithstanding the importance and accessibility of reductionism, the shortcomings and inherent weaknesses within the technique must be noted. There are two of primary consequence:
- The loss of information in the process of reduction
- Question centrality
Inherent within reducing complexity, is the loss of some information - otherwise, there would be no reduction occurring, merely a re-packaging of the information. Consequential to this loss of information is that the ‘reduced’ form may have numerous defects associated with it. Indeed, there are limits to reduction, dependent on the question being asked, and reduction beyond this point would lead to a misrepresented understanding rather than simply a reduced one.
The point this occurs, as contended by Randall Firestone, when there is relevant information that is excluded for a correct understanding of its nature, causing an incapacity to understand and explain. This is humorously demonstrated if one considers a duck being reduced to that of the image (which was real). At that point, one’s understanding of a ‘duck’ is now actively hampered rather than aided. Thus, if one wishes to convey complex information, they can practically test whether information has been oversimplified by asking if the representation is accurate to its true nature. However, this is difficult when one does not have such an understanding and requires some reduction to learn.
Question centrality#
Reductionism, particularly of the descriptive kind is a relatively straightforward task when deployed against complex systems that nominally have some function. However, it becomes substantially more difficult for non-functional systems - such as poverty. Consider the following example of poverty, when reduced through a description: the function of such a broad scale ‘reductionism’ is questionable, it acts most obviously on people’s livelihoods, but also upon policy considerations and how society interacts. The inputs of poverty are varied and wide, including the nominal ‘functions’ of poverty, but can range from human-nature to geography. Similarly, the physical constitution of poverty is equally elusive, being made of people, government policy, the environment, the economy and so forth.
The understanding and perspective one seeks from reducing is paramount to how one does the reduction. The poverty example highlights the importance of ‘question centrality’, where reduction to understanding must have a purpose of understanding. Otherwise, to accurately describe the matter as above has effectively no reductive value on the complexity, being equally complex before and after. However, when targeted with a question, for instance, to understand poverty’s historical influences on a nation’s infrastructure policy, then poverty’s function, inputs, and constituent components do not remain as amorphous or elusive.
Consequently, it must be remembered reduced representations made for one purpose inherently cannot be transferred easily or without modification to serve another purpose. Just as GDP is representative of a few features, it is unwise to employ such a metric outside those confined purposes. Indeed, this is very reason why there various methods of calculating GDP (e.g. nominal vs real GDP) reflects the various questions that each synthetic variable seeks to answer.
- Randall S Firestone, ‘Oversimplification in Philosophy’ (2019) 9(3) Open Journal of Philosophy 396.