Reductionism
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Reductionism is any of several related philosophical ideas regarding the associations between phenomena which can be described in terms of simpler or more fundamental phenomena. It is also described a
René Descartes, in De homine (1662), claimed that non-human animals could be explained reductively as automata; meaning essentially as more mechanically complex versions of this Digesting Duck.
Materialism
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In philosophy and metaphysics, materialism is a form of monism holding that matter is the fundamental substance of nature, so that all things, including mind and consciousness, arise from material int
Reductionism
…to holism. Reductionism tends to focus on the small, predictable details of a system and is often associated with various philosophies like emergence, materialism, and determinism. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy suggests that reductionism is "one of the most used and abused terms in the philosophical lexicon…
Leucippus (4th century BC), father of atomism and teacher of Democritus. Painting by Luca Giordano, c. 1653.
Atomists proposed that the universe consists of atoms moving in space. Of the Nature of Things by Lucretius, 1682.