ABSTRACT
This chapter aims at questioning the scope of explanatory reductionism (ER) in biology. I argue that explanatory reduction constitutes at most one dimension of biological practice and present three other dimensions where a sweeping reductive strategy does not arise. The first dimension concerns the context argument against ER, which asserts that contextual elements cannot be fully molecularly specified. The second concerns the extra-information argument, stating that molecular information itself cannot exhaust explanatory resources needed for explaining biological phenomena. The extra information is always provided by spatial, structural, geometrical, topological, or mathematical explanations which cannot be simply reduced to the molecular level. The last regards pragmatic elements that affect the assessment and selection of good explanations, including particular problems being raised, specific contexts under which the problems are being raised and cost-and-benefit considerations that shape the space of potential explanations.
