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Life is not so Simple After All

It is not that reductionism is a bad idea, but that it, like some other good ideas, has been pushed beyond its explanatory capability to what Rothman calls microreductionism. This is an argument with a long history, but like nature-nurture it seems never to be settled in some peoples' minds. While the nature-nurture argument has been demonstrated (to my mind at least) to be pretty much a non-argument (a few ultra-determinists not withstanding) the argument with microreductionism (which is to some extent related to the fight over nature-nurture) is still somewhat in flux. Reductionism in its best sense has been very productive, giving us drugs to fight diseases for example, and numerous other important insights about the structure and function of nature. However, Rothman has now demonstrated that some biological problems are non-reducible and thus reductionism is limited in its ability to explain. This is not because of some mystical property of cells (everybody pretty much dismisses the idea of a mystical vital principle that animates living things), but simply because of the necessary structure associated with biological function. In some ways the living cell has transcended the idea of a whole being a sum of its parts simply because of the complexity of cellular structure and function. Thus if you pounded a granite rock to dust you could reconstruct the rock if you had enough pressure and heat, but once a cell is broken open (as Rothman points out) its contents cannot be reconstructed in any way known to modern science.

Perhaps it is time for biologists to admit the truth that at least some physicists (notably Stephen Hawking) have come to- the universe is not totally explainable by a few basic principles. It is, indeed, a complex structure that can only be partially understood by any method, including religious "truth." The basic complexity of nature has always been suspected by most field biologists and we are not surprised to see microreductionism come into question. Perhaps what we all need- biologist, chemist, mathematician, cleric, philosopher, or whatever- is a less arrogant attitude toward the wonderful universe in which we live. This sense of wonder and humility is what lies at the heart of the best of all disciplines. I believe Haldane once said the if the human mind was simple enough for man to totally understand it, man would be too simple to understand it. This can be applied to the universe as a whole and life in particular. This is not an excuse to avoid trying to understand- only a warning that complete understanding may be made impossible by the nature of things. In the end at some basic level we are haunted by the ghosts of Gödel and Heisenberg chanting to us that some things may be unknowable. We had best heed their warning. Rothman's book provides a good basic foundation in this area for biologists.

A must read for every practising scientist.

In other words the understanding that all phenomena can be reduced to their constituent parts and thus constructed as a whole from those parts. This implies that given the parts, and only the parts, the whole can be assembled without any need for access to the true whole to check whether this makes sense. In biology this typically means deconstructing an organism into its recognisable parts and rebuilding it in this way. This leads inevitably to the local view now used in modern medicine and thus to various problems with the associated medicines produced in this way. The unwillingness of most scientists to even consider the possibility that other methods exist or that other methods can be constructed without this part-wholes strategy means any other medical treatments exist on the fringe without proper investigation.

What do I mean by the first statement ? I mean that many books exist which propagate a given idea or concept but few exist which investigate in a detailed way a given theory such as the vesicle theory and analyse its shortcomings and its evidence in a thorough way. About the only other text I know of which does this, to some degree at least, is the one by Michel Schiff on "The Memory of Water" where again a scientist battles against the deeply entrenched reductionist paradigm.

Rothman, in the first six chapters, discusses the concepts and the basics surrounding the reductionist metaphysics (it is a metaphysic since it is based on an obvious metaphysical belief: that parts are only constructed from below i.e the parts upwards) as well as what the main aim of biology is: to understand what life is. He includes a section on the various ways scientists implicitly rely on the reductionist idea, he has a wonderful discussion between two scientists who argue the basis of life from both a reductionist and a non-reductionist viewpoint. Most of the second half of the book is a very detailed analysis of the evidence for two separate theories in biology: the first, on the contraction of muscle tissue and, the second, on the transport and secretion of proteins within the cell. Rothman finds quite succinctly that life cannot be explained in the reductionistic sense, meaning that an anlysis of the parts cannot ever lead to the whole without the whole being an aspect of the study itself. In fact it is the whole which defines the parts and the parts cannot exist in and of themselves without the whole.

Rothman presents the first of these arguments (muscle contraction) very well and details the failure of the reductionistic paradigm, however this is done in hindsight since this has been confirmed; the second argument is still on-going and as such his arguments are no doubt contentious and will remain so for some time to come. Nonetheless he analyses the evidence in great detail and presents very strong arguments in favour of his own research which attempts to study this process as part of a whole. Rothman also accounts for the longevity of dsicredited theories through the artificial support of them through authority and an attempt to revamp defunct theories through slight of hand by forcing the contradictory evidence to support the old theory.

A book worth reading for both a criticism of the reductionist paradigm and the failure of the scientific community to go beyond typical human weaknesses such as egotism. A must read for every practising scientist.

Book Description

The Human Genome Project is the culmination of a two-centuries-old scientific tradition that takes as its central tenet the principle of reductionism, or the belief that a system can be thoroughly understood when it is reduced to its most fundamental constituent parts. Experimental biologist Stephen Rothman explains that reductionism also has serious, even dangerous, limitations.

With the help of fascinating case studies, he takes a clear-eyed look at the social climate in which science is practiced and explores the collective psychology that he fears is leading scientists down a blind alley. Rothman explains why, despite all the hype surrounding the Genome Project, science is still no closer to building a bridge between molecules and reactions at the genetic level and large-scale biological processes. And, ultimately, he makes an eloquent and impassioned argument for a Darwinian-inspired approach to biological research that goes beyond reductionism to embrace living systems in their entirety.

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