17 June 2009

Worldview shift among science students

In a rather nice article:Is “Nonreductive Physicalism” an Oxymoron? :: Nancey Murphy :: Global Spiral a rather interesting observation a propos of the main topic caught my eye: "When I first began teaching, my students tended to be innate reductionists. That is, when I presented them with the model of the hierarchy of the sciences, and a corresponding hierarchy of complex systems, I never had to explain why reductionists held the position they did. Within an interval of about fifteen years, though, I’ve found that many students are innate anti-reductionists; thus it has become important to be able to explain why causal reductionism seems necessarily true to so many. There is a worldview change going on now, and reductionism has been one of the central features of the modern worldview."
So an anecdotal but worthwhile piece of evidence of a cultural shift involving worldview: and note it works away from reductionism.

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