Dr. Roger Scruton on Reductionism

The term 'reductionism' is sometimes used in another way and another context, to denote the attempt to rid the human world of the values, myths and superstitions that supposedly encumber it. For instance, a sexologist of the Kinsey variety may describe human sexual behaviour without reference to the thoughts of the participants, and 'reduce' it to a biological function, or a pleasurable sensation in the sexual parts. A Marxist may describe the legal system of a country without reference to the rights and duties that it defines, 'reducing' it instead to the power relations which are enforced by it. Here we encounter a peculiar use of the phrase 'nothing but'. Sex is 'nothing but' the means whereby our genes perpetuate themselves; or is 'nothing but' the pleasure felt in the sexual parts; justice is 'nothing but' the power requirements of the ruling class; gallantry is 'nothing but' the means we have devised for reminding women of their servitude. (See the argument of Thrasymachus in the first book of Plato's Republic.) Reductionism of this kind does not merely involve a host of philosophical confusions. It is essentially anti-philosophical, based in the desire to simplify the world in favour of some foregone conclusion, whose appeal lies in its ability to disenchant and so demean us. The reductionist 'opens our eyes' on to the truth of our condition. But of course, it is not the truth at all, and is believed to be true only because it is shocking. There is, here, a contempt for truth and for human experience that a philosopher should do his best to overcome. Even if a genetic strategy explains human sexual behav-[29] iour, this does not entitle us to conclude that the thing explained is identical with, reducible to, or 'nothing but' the thing that explains it. (After all, a genetic strategy explains our belief in mathematics.) One task for philosophy in our time is to teach people to resist this kind of vulgar reductionism. Unfortunately, modern universities devote a great amount of their energy to endorsing it.

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Source: Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey (New York, NY: Penguin Books USA, 1996), 28-29.