MORE IS DIFFERENT - BROKEN SYMMETRY AND NATURE OF HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
MORE IS DIFFERENT - BROKEN SYMMETRY AND NATURE OF HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURE OF SCIENCE
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DOI：
10.1126/science.177.4047.393
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发表时间：
1972-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
56.9
通讯作者：
ANDERSON, PW
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
ANDERSON, PW
还原论假说可能仍然是哲学家之间争论的话题，但我认为在绝大多数活跃的科学家中，它是毫无疑问地被接受的。我们的思想和身体的运作，以及我们所了解的所有有生命或无生命物质的运作，都被认为受到同一套基本法则的控制，除了在某些极端条件下，我们认为我们非常了解这些法则。似乎不可避免地要不加批判地继续下去，乍一看似乎是还原论的明显推论：如果一切都遵循相同的基本定律，那么唯一正在研究任何真正根本性事物的科学家就是那些致力于这些定律的人。实际上，这相当于一些天体物理学家、一些基本粒子物理学家、一些逻辑学家和其他数学家，以及少数其他人。魏斯科普夫 (Weisskopf) 在一段相当著名的段落中表达了这一观点，这也是本文的主要目的。 (1)：纵观二十世纪科学的发展，我们可以区分两种趋势，我将其称为“密集”和“广泛”研究，但缺乏更好的术语。简而言之：精研求基本规律，广研究求前因后果。
The reductionist hypothesis may still be a topic for controversy among phi-losophers, but among the great majority of active scientists I think it is accepted without question. The workings of our minds and bodies, and of all the ani-mate or inanimate matter of which we have any detailed knowledge, are as-sumed to becontrolled by the same set of fundamental laws, which except under certain extreme conditions we feel we know pretty well. It seems inevitable to go on uncrit-ically to what appears at first sight to be an obvious corollary of reduction-ism: that if everything obeys the same fundamental laws, then the only sci-entists who are studying anything really fundamental are those who are working on those laws. In practice, that amounts to some astrophysicists, some elemen-tary particle physicists, some logicians and other mathematicians, and few others. This point of view, which it is the main purpose of this article to oppose, is expressed in a rather wellknown passage by Weisskopf (1):Looking at the development of science in the Twentieth Century one can dis-tinguish two trends, which I will call" intensive" and" extensive" research, lacking a better terminology. In short: in-tensive research goes for the fundamental laws, extensive research goes for the ex-