1.13. Reductionism and Wholism

As a writer and a teacher I cannot escape the problems of 'reductionism' which is not all a bad thing, indeed, reductionism is partly a good thing, partly a solution to a problem -- the problem of 'understanding things and processes' by taking these things and processes to their 'lowest common denominator' in order to better understand how each and every part ('thing' and/or 'process') of a united system works.

The problem arises when people fail to see the full united context of how different things and processes are 'interconnected' -- wholistically united together. When people fail to see the full, wholistic, united context of a particular 'reduced' thing, process, or event, then they tend to draw conclusions and judgments that are distorted by their 'reductionistic mentality and attitude'.

People, things, processes, and events get scapgoated as a resulted of distorted judgments and decisions based on reductionistic thinking that pulls a 'particular piece' from the whole and fails to see properly how this particular piece interacts with the rest of the whole. For example, a manager of a company suspends a supervisor for 'padding accounting numbers' even though it was the manager him or herself put undue pressure on the worker to reach accounting goals that were not realistically obtainable without jeoparding the safety of the customers who were using the company's goods or services.

Furthermore, if one were to do a full 'wholistic' analysis of the situation one might find that the manager was being overly-pressured by the president of the company to achieve unrealistic performance standards, and the president of the company may have been overly pressured by the unrealistic performance standards of the shareholders of the company, and in some cases the shareholders of the company may even be unreasonably pressured by politicians to achieve unrealistic performance standards.

In the case, for example, where a private contractor is working hand in hand with a particular segment of the government that might expect unrealistic performance standards from the private contractor that jeopardize the public's safety. So the 'padded numbers' are found out, and the supervisor is suspended, perhaps fired for what he did. But it could have been worse. The supervisor could have tried to force the unrealistic performance standards which might have resulted in a public accident -- say a train derailing or a bus getting into an accident because the driver was travelling too fast.

Neither the politicians nor the 'higher ups in the company' want a full-scale investigation of the accident because fault may come back on their shoulders. So a quick, 'reductionistic' judgment and decision is made, a worker is suspended, fired, or found negligent by the courts, and put in jail -- and all the higher ups 'insulate' themselves from all blame and accountability relative to the part they played in 'promoting the unethical behavior'.

Reductionism and wholism are like to different camera lenses -- reductionism representing the 'close-up, zoom' camera lens and wholism representing the 'panoramic view' lens.

Any good camera man is going to fully utilize both types of lenses separately and/or in harmony with each other and any good 'analyst' and/or philosopher is going to fully utilize both reductionistic and holistic approaches to his or her work.

Such, I hope, is the case in all of the separate and integrative philosophical works that follow here. Reductionisn and wholism are both important functions of what I am trying to accomplish here -- in harmony with each other.


-- dgb, Sept. 25th, 2006.

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Dialectic Gap-Briding Negotiations...

-- Are Still In Process