Theoretical reductionism and physicalist scientific unificationism: The case against

Abstract

To place diverse and prolific social theorists and philosophers within the constraints of some classifactory scheme is a task which always leads to major difficulties: virtually all of these thinkers will break one’s neatly drawn constraints in some respects. Nevertheless, to fail to do this has much worse consequences: one is condemned to an atomistic methodology which to be sure enables a clear exposition of the point of view of one theorist (or tradition), while failing to expose what the similarities there are between seemingly different view points. This, from the perspective of the metamethodological comments of the previous chapter is objectionable because one must then ignore insights which may well arise from such broad comparative analyses, and is self-defeating given the metascientific aim to understand as much about the World as possible. Oversimplifications are a small price to pay for this possibility.