出刊年月/Date of Publishing

1996.12

所屬卷期/Vol. & No.   第26卷第4期 Vol. 26, No. 4

類型/Type                 研究論文 Research Article

篇名/Title
微化約與科學統合
Microreductionism and the Unity of Science

作者/Author
彭孟堯 Eric M. Peng

頁碼/Pagination
pp. 99-137

摘要
--

Abstract
Based upon the presupposition of “hierarchical ontology,” this essay first examined two versions of microreductionism proposed by Oppenheim and Putnam and Garfinkel respectively. It then drew a distinction between “entity reduction” and “property reduction” and established six types of scientific explanation. Furthermore, both reductionists and antireductionists are committed to a quite doubtful deductivist perspective and to the failed conceptual connection of reductionism with the thesis of the unity of science. Hence, I proposed a new conception of a unitary science—what I call “universal science.” I accepted Vollmer’s idea that the world hierarchy has the property of evolutionary unity and hence I proposed the possibility of establishing a universal science to grasp this property. Such a universal science would then consist of three types of explanatory laws: the constellational laws which explain how upper-level entities are structured from lower-level entities; the fifth-type laws that explain how monadic properties of entities at a certain level are resulted from the interactions among subordinate entities; and causal/functional laws that explain how same-level entities causally interact.

關鍵字/Key Word
--

DOI
--

學門分類/Subject
哲學 Philosophy