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This is a crucial point to make. Even if every natural phenomenon can be reduced to very early-level processes (e.g., physics), earlier levels of analysis have little predictive value at later levels of analysis.

Does anyone have a term for this from philosophy of science literature?




I don't know the term for it, but it's the most common non-strawman version of the anti-reductionist argument.

If you want to ruin your day, you can try and parse through the SEP page on reductionism. It's a doozy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-reduction/


If I understand what you’re asking, the term would be emergence. In philosophy this means that that behavior, property, or attribute arises from parts or components that do not show that behavior, property, or attribute themselves either in part or in whole.




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