Critical Evaluation of Reductionism in Nigel and Oppenheim-Putnam Models of Science Unity

The unity or non-unity of science has been one of the most important philosophical issues in the twentieth century. One of the most important answers to the question of the unity of science has been suggested by reductionists. The present article focuses on two prominent examples of such approaches. The first example was taken from the philosophical movements of rational positivism and the second example was chosen from the post-positivist philosophical movements. We have shown that the supposedly successful reductions in science have given rise to the idea that the answer to the question of the unity of science is possible through reduction. We have then argued that the reductionist approach is fundamentally inefficient, inadequate, and incorrect. Reductionism is ineffective because it does not contribute to conceptual and ontological simplification. It is inadequate because, first, it does not cover the ontological diversity of fundamentally different scientific activities, and second, it does not provide an adequate answer to the explanatory need on why one ontological and epistemological layer is more fundamental than the other ones. Reductionism is wrong because, first, it is incompatible with the history of the evolution of scientific theories; second, it does not properly explain the relationship between evidences and theories. Third, according to Foder, it cannot solve the problem of multiple-realizability; fourth, according to Feyerabend, if the incomparability of scientific theories is correct, the possibility of any kind of communication, including deductive communication, is ruled out. The failure of reductionism shows that models like Nigel and Putnam-Oppenheim do not provide a suitable answer to the problem of the unity of science. Therefore, it is suggested that the answer to the problem of the unity of science be pursued through a non-reductionist approach.