reductionism

is the view that 'the explanatory arrows always point downward' from society to small groups to individuals, to cells, to chemistry.

Roughly, reductionism is the view that, as Nobel Laureate Stephen Weinberg eloquently puts it, the 'explanatory arrows always point downward', from society to small groups to individuals to organs to cells to chemistry to physics and ultimately to something like Weinberg's Dreams of a Final Theory, a single set of laws, elegant in their form, like General Relativity, which, in Weinberg's sense, explains all' (Net article by Stuart Kaufman).

reductionism, n.Definitions

reductionism