Transcending Biological and Social Reductionism

The sociological reductionism of poststructuralist analysis has been refuted by biological science--human beings have a nature that evolved. But biogenetic reductionism leaves out as many awkward facts as psychosocial reductionism does. A close reading of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse indicates an answer to the fundamental question at issue. How did meaning, freedom and value evolve in a physical universe? New understandings of the evolution of time, and chaos-theoretical concepts of emergent self-organization and strange attractors, suggest a redefinition of "survival," the key concept of evolution, which allows plenty of room for freedom, meaning, and value.