The Reductionist Imperative and the Nature of Humanity: Questions in Political Biology

Abstract

Explanatory reduction has had vast successes in the natural sciences. Many teachers, students and others therefore take as an axiom that all biological phenomena, including human action, can eventually be fully explained by reduction to physics. They also readily accept other forms of reduction, in which human beings are described as though they were animals or passive carriers of genes. But these attempts to 'demystify' the human condition are based on factual and logical errors. Replacing everyday knowledge, history or the social sciences by biology or physics also omits the crucial concept of human beings as autonomous agents. Such doctrines, based on neglect of persons, are not merely theories: they are of the most urgent social significance.