ABSTRACT
Nobel Prize winner Eric R. Kandel wrote a book titled Reductionism in Art and Brain Science in which he argued that reductionism – the distillation of larger scientific or aesthetic concepts into smaller, more tractable components – has been used by scientists and artists alike to pursue their respective truths. Perhaps because of the immense publicity that acts of terrorism, and the threat of terrorism, receive, it is especially prone to these simplistic rules. A humanistic perspective also encourages us to remember that terrorists are humans, the same as us. The psychology of terrorism is a nuanced and complex field of study, and the key to success in understanding the psychology of terrorism is not to fold in the face of pressure to answer simple questions that are asked of us in the aftermath of an attack, but to embrace the complexity and begin to ask smarter questions about the specific nature of terrorism.
