Tag Archive for ‘Behaviour’

Does reductive scientific enquiry into human behaviour destroy free will?

When I was 17 my physics teacher told me that all biology was chemistry, all chemistry was physics and all physics was maths. “And maths?” I asked. “Ask the philosophers” was her reply. This is an excellent example of the reductionism inherent in much of scientific enquiry. Broadly speaking, reductionism supposes that there are causal mechanisms underlying all phenomena, with further causes underlying these mechanisms, which can be detected if we only know where and how to search for them.