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SCIENCE STUDIES EVENTS
INTERDISCIPLINARITY VERSUS REDUCTIONISM: AN ANALYSIS
OF FOUR DEBATES IN THE 19TH CENTURY LIFE SCIENCES
Joachim Schummer
Department of Philosophy
University of South Carolina, Columbia
April 15, 2003
Tuesday, 12:30pm
Preston Seminar Room
I discuss four famous controversies in the 19th-century life sciences
in which scholars from various disciplines were involved although each
of the underlying issues can be clearly assigned to one discipline: the
nature of fermentation (organic chemistry), the nature of infectious
diseases (medicine), the generation of life from inanimate matter
(biology), and vitalism (metaphysics). I argue that the standard
interpretation among historians and philosophers of science, according
to which all controversies were basically about reductionism, is not
only far-fetched but also leads us astray from understanding
interdisciplinary research.
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