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Why Reductionism does not Work

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Wider den Reduktionismus

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Zusammenfassung

Kurt Gödel opposed the reductionist viewpoint of logical positivism. The arguments I give below show he is correct. The reductionist explanation he opposed is doomed to failure.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I do not enter here into the debate on the nature of computation (Fresco 2012); the above statement is true whatever view one takes.

  2. 2.

    This is required in order that a Universal Turing Machine can function.

  3. 3.

    I am discounting Many Worlds and Hidden Variable theories because they simply have no cash value for the physicist doing experiments in her laboratory. They do not predict, on the basis of the initial data, the outcomes she will measure in specific individual cases.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mathematics Department, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

    George F. R. Ellis

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  1. Fakultät für Mathematik und Naturwissenschaften, University of Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

    Oliver Passon

  2. Department of Maths and CS, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Christoph Benzmüller

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Ellis, G.F.R. (2021). Why Reductionism does not Work. In: Passon, O., Benzmüller, C. (eds) Wider den Reduktionismus. Springer Spektrum, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-63187-4_6

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