SaveYourself.ca • Sensible advice for aches, pains & injuries
a micro article
Alternative medicine professionals often derisively accuse their critics of being “reductionist.” It is intended to sound wise and knowing, but sneering at “reductionism” is a transparently convenient way to dismiss rational objections to crank theories and flaky bullshit — the main context in which it comes up. It’s a gripe, not a meaningful thought, about those who allegedly can’t see the forest for the trees. It insinuates a lack of vision and savvy about complex systems (like the body). This is quite ironic, coming as it usually does from barely-trained dabblers and dilettantes, people who clearly have not exactly mastered either forest or trees. (Anyone actually capable of being seeing profound patterns in complex systems would be a scientific celebrity.)
Certainly reductionism can go wrong (see Dan Dennett’s concept of “greedy reductionism”). But good reductionism — the real thing, not the insult — is just one of many thinking and reasoning tools … not an all-consuming obliviousness to “the whole.”
Micro articles are short summaries, under 300 words, of well-defined topics or key points that tend to come up when discussing pain and therapy science. They can stand on their own, but they are also often included dynamically in articles all over SaveYourself.ca. So, for instance, you might see this one somewhere in the main text of a larger article, or in a footnote. There aren’t many of these for now, but in time I hope to have about a hundred of these little article “snacks.” Here’s what’s available so far…