From the opposition between reductionism and holism to the unity of contradiction

R eductionism depicts a world where all matter can be decomposed into independent, distinct fundamental units. Starting from these units, we can reconstruct the entire world. Holism, however, argues that matter is inherently indivisible and must be considered as a whole. These two perspectives on understanding the world are ancient, yet they only truly emerged as systematic, opposing camps on the intellectual stage roughly within the last century.

Recently, criticism of reductionism within the scientific community has increased. Glancing through several scientific articles, especially those in top-tier journals, reveals this trend. Initially, without much deeper thought, this seemed to me to reflect that our understanding of the material world had reached a bottleneck. The depth and breadth of contemporary scientific research far exceed the sum of the past three hundred years. The number of participants in contemporary science also surpasses the total of the past. Viewing this through Kuhn’s concept of “paradigm shifts,” it seemed science had entered an era requiring revolutionary transformation.

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

My undergraduate scientific training taught me that “structure determines properties.” To investigate problems at the apparent level, one must delve downwards, reaching the molecular or atomic level to understand the matter itself. However, over the past 6–7 years, my experience in scientific research has followed an opposite path. More often than not, my work involved an Edisonian process — conducting numerous experiments to find the optimal result, and then subsequently piecing together a coherent, microscopic-level theory. The theoretical approach diverged from, or even reversed, the practical implementation path. We were forced to introduce special exceptions for case after case. Simultaneously, theoretical complexity exploded. These exceptions and complex theories inevitably led to the fragmentation between disciplines. The more work we did, the more we analyzed, the more complex the theories became — seemingly bringing us closer to truth, yet paradoxically pushing us further away. I believe almost every contemporary researcher faces this problem. To a large extent, because of this discrepancy, the researcher’s work has transformed into writing fantastical scientific narratives, rather than letting the material, the truth itself, speak.

Thomas Edison (11 February 1847 — 18 October 1931)

Does this mean we should pursue a holistic understanding?

After this initial realization, I indeed thought so. But reality shows that without reductionism, matter becomes unresearchable. Although many studies claim to approach problems from a holistic perspective, the actual substance often remains within the old paradigm. In the holistic assumption, if matter is indivisible and must be considered as a whole, the number of parameters we need to consider increases dramatically. If a cell can only be understood within the context of the human body, and the human within the universe, then the consequence is that we must understand the entire universe to understand any specific thing. If, however, we blur some properties of the whole and focus on constituent units, this simply becomes reductionism applied at a macroscopic scale.

More and more reflection suggests this is another impossible world. Both reductionism and holism ultimately aim for the same thing: for humans to become like God, recreating the world. And this is utterly impossible. Humans and science cannot achieve such a goal. We must develop a more fundamental understanding of reductionism and holism.

If reductionism emphasizes that matter can be decomposed into independent, distinct fundamental units, then do such independent, non-interdependent fundamental units exist in our world? I believe anyone could firmly answer: No! So, how do independent fundamental units come about? Take hydrogen bonding, a force crucial to the material world, as an example. Although hydrogen bond research has spanned over a century, each scholar studying different cases proposed their own definition. It wasn’t until 2011 that the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) provided a relatively comprehensive definition of the hydrogen bond. In specific research, we generally consider interactions within a distance of 2.3–3.5 Ångstroms and with angles close to right angles as hydrogen bonds. In even more detailed studies, the criteria become fuzzier, often expanding the acceptable range.

Hydrogen Bond

The story of the hydrogen bond reveals the process of defining an independent fundamental unit. First, a scholar notices a potential “unit” (in this case, Linus Pauling played this role). Subsequently, over a long period, numerous scholars working on diverse specific problems attempt to characterize this “unit.” Only after sufficient research, sufficient time, and the investigation of sufficiently varied problems does the scientific community reach a partial consensus and propose a definition. We can see that within this process of establishing an independent fundamental unit lies the shadow of holism. Only by probing enough cases — hydrogen bonds in water, hydrogen bonds in water in different states, hydrogen bonds in different proteins, etc. — can we define a standard fundamental “unit”! From this perspective, the fundamental units recognized by reductionism are essentially macroscopic statistical results, abstractions based on numerous observations of similar phenomena while ignoring extreme cases. More profoundly, they are abstractions of the phenomena we observe.

Linus Pauling (28 February 1901 — 19 August 1994)

And holism? Holism emphasizes that matter itself cannot be divided; it cannot be broken down into fundamental units and can only be understood as the whole entity itself. Its argument states that the matter we observe possesses unique characteristics inherent to it as a whole, characteristics that cannot be determined through reductionist methods. Its significance lies in asserting that the matter we study has an existence independent of our observations — an intrinsic essence, the thing-in-itself (noumenon).

Thus, the core of the problem becomes the opposition between the phenomena we abstract and the matter itself. At this point, we can be quite pleased, because in the long history of philosophy, a philosopher from Königsberg (Immanuel Kant) addressed precisely this divide. Kant divided the world into the “phenomenal world” (phenomena) and the “thing-in-itself” (noumena). He proposed that humans can only know phenomena, while the thing-in-itself follows its own laws. The phenomenal world and the noumena are fundamentally opposed; they cannot be placed on the same level of thought. The contradiction between them is irreconcilable, necessitating their separation. This separation led Kant’s philosophy to encounter the problem of “antinomy” — situations where two seemingly contradictory conclusions about the same object or problem are both logically sustainable. This very problem is the core challenge faced by both reductionism and holism. Judging from this, the contradiction between reductionism and holism must inevitably exist eternally; it absolutely cannot be unified. The core of this opposition stems not merely from epistemological differences; it originates from the opposition between Kant’s “phenomena” and “noumena.”

Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724–12 February 1804)

If we accept the opposition between reductionism and holism, can we stop the debate, like Kant, ignoring the contradiction and discussing them only within their respective domains?

The answer is clearly no. If science is the pursuit of truth, and if the “truth” about a specific problem can only speak from one perspective while being utterly inexplicable from the other, then is this “truth” really truth? The fundamental conflict is this: Can science penetrate phenomena to reach the noumenon? According to Kant, the answer is no. This directly challenges the legitimacy of science’s quest for ultimate truth. On the other hand, confronting this contradiction is not something we can evade through subjective will. It is precisely the depth and breadth of scientific research that compels us to attempt it.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (27 August 1770–14 November 1831)

Fortunately, another philosopher from Germany (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel) offered a solution to Kant’s “antinomy.” If opposition exists eternally and contradiction cannot be negated, then contradiction itself becomes a profoundly transformative force. Since the opposition between reductionism and holism stems from the opposition between phenomena and the thing-in-itself, we can harness the transformative power of contradiction to achieve the following:

• Accept Incompleteness: Transform unknowability into a driving force for exploration. Accept that scientific models are always approximations of phenomena but reject the passivity of agnosticism. Do not obsess over seeking the “ultimate explanation.”
• Define Boundaries and Diagnose: Delineate the realms of “what can be reduced” and “what requires a holistic view” for specific problems. Clarify, for a specific research object, which properties can be adequately explained by underlying mechanisms, and which properties require consideration of higher-level interactions.
• Iterate Boundaries: Use “boundary expansion” to approach more complete models. Actively expose points of failure to drive theoretical refinement. Treat “anomalous data” inexplicable by reductionism as signals of holistic effects, not merely noise.

Truth resides not in either extreme, but within the tension of opposites. In this state, opposition and contradiction cease to be destructive forces; they become constructive. Finally, I must emphasize that the exploration of contradictions absolutely cannot be achieved solely through Hegelian subjective imagination or simply by scholars shifting their mindset or possessing innovative thinking. Deeper investigation into material science will forever require superior tools.

The above discussion is based on my understanding of dialectical materialism. I find it still incomplete and remain in a constant state of learning. I believe this will be the primary methodology for my future research. I call it the contradiction-based methodology.

Contradiction (Chinese: 矛盾)

Notice: The original version is Chinese. This is the translation version from DeepSeek-R1: 0528. Using LLM is easily to translate my original meaning to English.

Thanks for your reading.