Books

Authored / Springer

This book develops a philosophical account that reveals the major characteristics that make an explanation in the life sciences reductive and distinguish them from non-reductive explanations. Understanding what reductive explanations are enables one to assess the conditions under which reductive explanations are adequate and thus enhances debates about explanatory reductionism. The account of reductive explanation presented in this book has three major characteristics. First, it emerges from a critical reconstruction of the explanatory practice of the life sciences itself. Second, the account is monistic since it specifies one set of criteria that apply to explanations in the life sciences in general. Finally, the account is ontic in that it traces the reductivity of an explanation back to certain relations that exist between objects in the world (such as part-whole relations and level relations), rather than to the logical relations between sentences.

• Download the table of contents here (.pdf)
• Download the chapter abstracts and keywords here (.pdf)
• Download the introduction here (.pdf)

I received the Offermann-Hergarten Award from the University of Cologne for this book.

Reviews of this book:

• Ingo Brigandt has reviewed this book for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2016).
• Read also Alan Love’s review in Philosophy of Science 85(3): “New Perspectives on Reductionism in Biology“ (2018).