Scholars are often dismissive of levels above the one they work at because they believe higher-level regularities will be deduced from lower-level regularities. This stance is an example of what?

• A. Emergentism
• B. Reductionism
• C. Holism
• D. Functionalism

Answer: (B)

Reductionism is the view that higher-level phenomena can be explained entirely by the laws and regularities of their parts; larger patterns are not genuinely new facts, but can be deduced from deeper, lower-level regularities. The statement describes scholars who ignore higher levels because they expect all those regularities to be derivable from the lower level, which is the essence of reductionism. Emergentism would argue that higher-level properties are new and not reducible to parts; holism emphasizes studying systems as wholes rather than reducing to parts; functionalism focuses on the roles or functions something plays within a system. Therefore, this stance is reductionism.