a) Holist Versus Reductionist Accounts
Evolutionary biology presents another domain for the debate
between reductionism and holism. ii) Methodology As Barbour, Ernst Mayr and
others stress, methodological reductionism has been fruitful in molecular
biology, but other methodologies such as population genetics and ecology are
needed to deal with organisms as a whole. ii) Epistemology. As Francisco Ayala points out,there are biological functions and concepts which cannot be defined in purely
chemical and physical terms; they include fitness, adaptation, predator, organ,
heterozygosity, and sexuality. For Mayr,evolutionary biology is best treated as historical narrative. Anti-reductionist
views such as these in biology fit nicely in the broader epistemic hierarchies
developed by Peacocke, Murphy and Ellis.iii) Ontology. Reductive materialism is frequently championed as the
only alternative to vitalism, but there are other options. Barbour, for
example, supports a holist philosophy of organicism drawn from Whiteheadian
metaphysics in which the capacity for experience is ubiquitous in nature (i.e.,
panexperientialism). By envisioning the ecosystem as a whole, with its many interwoven
ecological communities, rather than individual organisms in nature, as the
primary context of ecological ethics, Holmes Rolston suggests a holist ontology
as well. Other
holist ontologies include Murphys emergentist monism (nonreductive physicalism)
and what I call ontological emergence (see Part 1, D and E, above).
Contributed by: Dr. Robert Russell
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