ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the idea that because the world and everything in it, including human beings, is made up of atoms and sub-atomic particles, then perhaps the best way to study psychology – human behaviour and experience – is from the bottom-up, so to speak. The ‘reductionist’ approach implies that for every thought that an individual has and for every behaviour that s/he exhibits, such thoughts and behaviours are undeniably ‘created’ out of and made possible by events at a ‘lower’ level. It’s simply an undeniable fact that we as human beings are ‘merely’ an integrated biological system made up of atoms. It’s just a fact that anything that can be talked about at ‘higher’ levels,
such as a picnic, a car, a textbook, a table, a human being, or an idea, etc., is only possible because they emerge out of physical and biological matter composed of atoms. Chapter Four which examines the mindbody question continues this argument. Here the issue addressed is whether or not it is reasonable to suggest that when we talk about ‘mind’ we should be talking about something physical – made up of atoms – or meta-physical – somehow something more than mere matter. The present chapter also examines experimental reductionism and the implications of the evolutionary perspective.
