ABSTRACT
Biological reductionism can be seen to have originated with Descartes in the seventeenth century, while relying heavily on Newtonian mechanics later in the century, and in later centuries on the mathematical genius of Pierre-Simon Laplace. Descartes laid the foundation by arguing that animals could be regarded as machines in some way, comparable to the ingenious hydrostatic robots that had become popular among the aristocracy in their gardens. Since the environmental influences arise from a higher level, circular causality must occur, downwards as well as upwards. “Down” and “up” are metaphors and should be treated carefully. The essential point is the more neutral statement: there is no privileged scale of causality, which is the a priori principle of biological relativity. The boundary conditions define what constraints are imposed on the system by its environment and can therefore be considered a form of contextual causation from a higher scale. This diagram is highly simplified to represent what actually solve mathematically.
