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Preface to the Original Edition
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Preface to the Original Edition DISCOVERING COMPLEXITY represents the culmination ofnearly a decade of collaboration. Our work developed out of struggles with the standard philosophical framework of theory reduction, one which we found nearly impossible to apply to the life sciences. We discovered, instead, that the attempts to localize the causes of phenomena in components of complex systems and to investigate the organization in these systems reflect what many scientists understand by the term reduction-a discovery that made more sense of the contrasting approaches of scientists toward their own disciplines. William Wimsatt, our mentor in graduate school and in the development of our careers, introduced us to the notion of localization and to the various and complex problems affecting reduction. Under his instruction we became familiar with Elliot Valentine's text Brain Control: A Critical Examination of Brain Stimulation and Psychosurgery (New York: Wiley, 1973) and with the work of R. L. Gregory, whose research on localization in the neurosciences figures prominently in Wimsatt's work as well as in our own. Finally, Wimsatt led us to the work of Herbert Simon, whose ideas constitute a dominant theme in our book. We began working on this book, originally entitled "An Alternative Approach to Reductive Explanation in the Philosophy of Science: A Study of Localizationist Research Programs," in 1983. The completed project took far longer than either of us anticipated. This was due in part to the extensive digesting required by the historical investigations; our initial analyses of the historical cases were far too detailed for the level of study we could pursue. Moreover, we had originally anticipated simply presenting parallel historical narratives from the neurosciences, physiological chemistry, and genetics, but subsequently decided that it was more fruitful and interesting to organize the presentation conceptually, incorporating the appropriate pieces of each study into such a framework. The extra time has been used in part to deepen our knowledge of the history and to reconceptualize the problem. While we started with a focus on reduction, the notion (as Marjorie Grene will be pleased to note) has all but disappeared from the book. Our focus shifted to the process of theory development and change. As we pursued the historical cases, we found that traditional philosophical accounts of theories did not fit. The scientists we were studying were not primarily interested in general laws; they sought instead to identify causal components that explained how various systems produced specific phenomena. For this mode of explanation we xiv • Preface to the Original Edition introduced the notion of a mechanistic explanation. Given that we could not appeal in our treatment to more familiar philosophical notions, we had to develop our own conceptual framework. For those who are interested in the differences between our approach and more traditional philosophical analyses, we draw some contrasts in Chapter 10. The structure of Discovering Complexity requires some comment. The case studies found in chapters 3 through 9 are the core of the book. It was through the analyses of these cases that our understanding of mechanistic explanation, and the process of developing such explanations, took form, and it is on them that we rest our claim to have provided a realistic analysis of scientific discovery. However, many readers may prefer to read only the conceptual framework at which we have arrived, without the historical detail; those so inclined should concentrate on chapters 1, 2, and 10. We believe that the details matter, and it is on the details rather than the general picture that we rest our case. For those with little patience for details, this will be a much shorter book. Chapter 1 argues for the focus on the dynamics of scientific discovery and offers our case for psychologizing the discovery process. Chapter 2 introduces the heuristics of decomposition and localization-which we claim guide much scientific theorizing directed toward mechanistic explanations-and explores the assumptions these heuristics entail. Chapter 10 then places the psychologistic analysis into a somewhat broader framework by introducing additional constraints that must be analyzed in a full dynamic analysis of the development of mechanistic explanations. The case studies are drawn largely from the nineteenth- and twentiethcentury history of disciplines focused on the operation of various components of living organisms. We concentrate primarily on episodes in the development of neurophysiological explanations of mental activities and of chemical accounts of basic physiological processes such as fermentation and oxidation. While we have omitted much historical detail, these cases are admittedly still challenging to a reader not familiar...