Discovering Complexity: Decomposition and Localization As Strategies in Scientific Research

by William Bechtel, Robert C. Richardson

Discovering Complexity offers an account of scientific discovery that aims to be psychologically and historically realistic. Drawing on cases from a number of life sciences, including biochemistry, genetics, and neuroscience, this study of the dynamics of theory development focuses on two psychological heuristics, decomposition and localization. William Bechtel and Robert Richardson identify a number of "choice-points" that scientists confront in developing mechanistic explanations and describe how different choices result in divergent explanatory models. According to Bechtel and Richardson's analysis, decomposition is the attempt to differentiate components of a system, while localization assigns responsibility for specific tasks to these components. The book examines in detail the usefulness of these heuristics in biological science, but also discusses their underlying their use is the sometimes false assumption that nature is significantly decomposable and hierarchical. When a system does not appear to be decomposable, a classic response has been to abandon the pursuit of mechanistic explanation and to settle for accurate descriptions of phenomena. More recently, with advances in mathematical modeling, an alternative has emerged. Described in this work is an approach to explanation that appeals to interactions between simple components, rather than assigning functions to individual components.

Genres: Science, Philosophy

308 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1992

Reviews

[Daniel Martínez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bastante bueno. Casos de estudio chulos, buena estructura, heurísticas interesantes. Tiene sus carencias también, pero se lo recomendaría a cualquier interesado en filosofía de la ciencia.

[Joshua Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though it's about 20 years old now, Bechtel and Richardson's Discovering Complexity is still strikingly relevant to the contemporary discussion in philosophy of science, partly because it hasn't been widely adopted. The discussion of "mechanisms" as an alternative for theory representations helps to shed light on some of the neglect for the biological sciences in the literature during the 90s, and though that part has gotten better, Bechtel and Richardson's points about the history of the biological sciences still remains somewhat lost.

I recommend the book to those who are looking at ways of understanding how we can come to offer substantial and engaging explanations of complex scientific mechanisms; how do we make scientific explanations accessible and comprehensible? This is a problem that is addressed well throughout the book, though many of the answers are (at least for me) unsatisfactory.

There are some interesting choices in the book in terms of case studies, which are no doubt a function of the backgrounds of Bechtel and Richardson. The cases are largely in biology, but even if we restrict ourselves to that domain, some of them seem a bit odd since things like genetics really do have good mathematical modes of explanation that aren't really effectively brought into doubt by the book; the presence of those alternatives seems to suggest that there are moments when Bechtel and Richardson somewhat overplay how much we want the mechanistic account they have in mind to do.

Overall, it is a good read. It is structure and written well, and digestible. I strongly recommend it.