[js8]

I would not be so sure. There are many fields where reductionism was applied in practice and it yielded useful results, thanks to computers.

Examples that come to mind: statistical modelling (reduction to nonparametric models), protein folding (reduction to quantum chemistry), climate/weather prediction (reduction to fluid physics), human language translation (reduction to neural networks).

Reductionism is not that useful as a theory building tool, but reductionist approaches have a lot of practical value.

[gilleain]

> protein folding (reduction to quantum chemistry),

I am not sure in what sense folding simulations are reducable to quantum chemistry. There are interesting 'hybrid' approaches where some (limited) quantum calculations are done for a small part of the structure - usually the active site I suppose - and the rest is done using more standard molecular mechanics/molecular dynamics approaches.

Perhaps things have progressed a lot since I worked in protein bioinformatics. As far as I know, even extremely short simulations at the quantum level were not possible for systems with more than a few atoms.

[TheAncientGeek]

That's a practical limitation. There's no barrier in principle to a complete reduction.

[jltsiren]

I meant that the word "reductionist" is usually an accusation of ignorance. It's not something people doing reductionist work actually use.

[nyeah]

But that common use of the word is ignorant nonsense. So, yes, someone is wrong on the internet. So what?

[jltsiren]

The context here was a claim that reducibility is usually a goal of intellectual pursuits. Which is empirically false, as there are many academic fields with a negative view of reductionism.