The Problem of Reductionism in Biology in the Post-Genomic era

Abstract

This research paper seeks to provide a philosophical and scientific explanation of what philosophers and biologists mean when they talk and argue about/and about reductionism and its limits, and the inadequacy of explaining the behavior of complex biological systems. Biologists' debates, at present, have focused on partial explanatory and methodological reductionism, that is, molecular explanatory reductionism: whether all biological explanations can be reduced to partial genetic explanations or explanations of lower-level properties of the system.

But, it turns out, things are only more complicated. It has been realized that the relationship between genes and phenotypic traits is much more complex than the partial reductionist picture suggests, and, moreover, that the behavior of complex, multi-level systems cannot be studied and explained fruitfully and adequately using partial reductionist methods of explanations, because higher-level or environmental factors cannot Ignore it or simplify it.

 The prevailing opinion in biological sciences to move beyond reductionism is that describing and explaining the behaviors of complex biological systems requires combining partial quantitative data with causal theoretical-conceptual models.