It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Reduction (philosophy) . (Discuss) Proposed since February 2011.

It has been suggested that Special sciences be merged into this article or section. (Discuss) Proposed since April 2011.

Descartes held that non-human animals could be reductively explained as automata — De homine, 1662.

Reductionism can mean either (a) an approach to understanding the nature of complex things by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things or (b) a philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can be reduced to accounts of individual constituents.^[1] This can be said of objects, phenomena, explanations, theories, and meanings.

Reductionism strongly reflects a certain perspective on causality. In a reductionist framework, phenomena that can be explained completely in terms of relations between other more fundamental phenomena, are called epiphenomena. Often there is an implication that the epiphenomenon exerts no causal agency on the fundamental phenomena that explain it.

Reductionism does not preclude the existence of what might be called emergent phenomena, but it does imply the ability to understand those phenomena completely in terms of the processes from which they are composed. This reductionist understanding is very different from that usually implied by the term 'emergence', which typically intends that what emerges is more than the sum of the processes from which it emerges.

Religious reductionism generally attempts to explain religion by boiling it down to certain nonreligious causes. A few examples of reductionistic explanations for the presence of religion are: that religion can be reduced to humanity's conceptions of right and wrong, that religion is fundamentally a primitive attempt at controlling our environments, and that religion is a way to explain the existence of a physical world. Anthropologists Edward Burnett Tylor and James George Frazer employed some religious reductionist arguments^[2]. Sigmund Freud's idea that religion is nothing more than an illusion, or even a mental illness, and the Marxist view that religion is "the sigh of the oppressed," providing only "the illusory happiness of the people," are two other influential reductionist explanations of religion.^[3]

There is a certain degree of reductionism in the social sciences, which often try to explain whole areas of social activity as mere subfields of their own field. As an example, Marxist economists often try to explain politics as subordinated to economy, and sociologists sometimes see economy and politics as mere sub-spheres of society.

Types of reductionism[link]

Theoretical reductionism[link]

Theoretical reduction is the process by which one theory absorbs another. For example, both Kepler's laws of the motion of the planets and Galileo’s theories of motion worked out for terrestrial objects are reducible to Newtonian theories of mechanics, because all the explanatory power of the former are contained within the latter. Furthermore, the reduction is considered to be beneficial because Newtonian mechanics is a more general theory—that is, it explains more events than Galileo's or Kepler's. Theoretical reduction, therefore, is the reduction of one explanation or theory to another—that is, it is the absorption of one of our ideas about a particular thing into another idea.

Methodological reductionism[link]

Methodological reductionism is the position that the best scientific strategy is to attempt to reduce explanations to the smallest possible entities. Methodological reductionism would thus hold that the atomic explanation of a substance’s boiling point is preferable to the chemical explanation, and that an explanation based on even smaller particles (quarks and leptons, perhaps) would be even better.^{[citation needed]}

Methodological reductionism, therefore, is the position that all scientific theories either can or should be reduced to a single super-theory through the process of theoretical reduction.

Ontological reductionism[link]

Ontological reductionism is the belief that reality is composed of a minimum number of kinds of entities or substances. This claim is usually metaphysical, and is most commonly a form of monism, in effect claiming that all objects, properties and events are reducible to a single substance. (A dualist who is an ontological reductionist would believe that everything is reducible to two substances - as one possible example, a dualist might claim that reality is composed of "matter" and "spirit".)

Nancey Murphy has claimed that there are two species of ontological reductionism: one that denies that wholes are anything more than their parts; and the stronger thesis of atomist reductionism that wholes are not "really real". She admits that the phrase "really real" is apparently senseless but nonetheless has tried to explicate the supposed difference between the two.^{[citation needed]}

Reductionism and science[link]

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Reductionist thinking and methods form the basis for many of the well-developed areas of modern science, including much of physics, chemistry and cell biology. Classical mechanics in particular is seen as a reductionist framework, and statistical mechanics can be viewed as a reconciliation of macroscopic thermodynamic laws with the reductionist approach of explaining macroscopic properties in terms of microscopic components.

In science, reductionism implies that certain fields of study are based on areas that study smaller spatial scales or organizational units. While it is commonly accepted that the foundations of chemistry are based in physics, and microbiology is rooted in chemistry, similar statements become controversial when one considers less rigorously defined intellectual pursuits. For example, claims that sociology is based on psychology, or that economics is based on sociology and psychology would be met with reservations.^{[citation needed]} These claims are difficult to substantiate even though there are clear connections between these fields (for instance, most would agree that psychology can affect and inform economics.^{[citation needed]}) The limit of reductionism's usefulness stems from emergent properties of complex systems, which are more common at certain levels of organization. For example, certain aspects of evolutionary psychology and sociobiology are rejected by some who claim that complex systems are inherently irreducible and that a holistic approach is needed to understand them.^{[citation needed]}

Some strong reductionists believe that the behavioral sciences should become "genuine" scientific disciplines based on genetic biology, and on the systematic study of culture (see Richard Dawkins's concept of memes). In his book The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins introduced the term "hierarchical reductionism"^[4] to describe the view that complex systems can be described with a hierarchy of organizations, each of which is only described in terms of objects one level down in the hierarchy. He provides the example of a computer, which under hierarchical reductionism is explained in terms of the operation of hard drives, processors, and memory, but not on the level of AND OR gates, or on the even lower level of electrons in a semiconductor medium.

Others argue that inappropriate use of reductionism limits our understanding of complex systems. In particular, ecologist Robert Ulanowicz says that science must develop techniques to study ways in which larger scales of organization influence smaller ones, and also ways in which feedback loops create structure at a given level, independently of details at a lower level of organization. He advocates (and uses) information theory as a framework to study propensities in natural systems.^[5] Ulanowicz attributes these criticisms of reductionism to the philosopher Karl Popper and biologist Robert Rosen.^{[citation needed][6]}

Reductionism in mathematics[link]

In mathematics, reductionism can be interpreted as the philosophy that all mathematics can (or ought to) be built off a common foundation, which is usually axiomatic set theory. Ernst Zermelo was one of the major advocates of such a view; he also developed much of axiomatic set theory. It has been argued that the generally accepted method of justifying mathematical axioms by their usefulness in common practice can potentially undermine Zermelo's reductionist program.^[7]

As an alternative to set theory, others have argued for category theory as a foundation for certain aspects of mathematics.^{[citation needed]}

Ontological reductionism[link]

Ontological reductionism is the claim that everything that exists is made from a small number of basic substances that behave in regular ways (compare to monism). Ontological reductionism denies the idea of ontological emergence, and claims that emergence is an epistemological phenomenon that only exists through analysis or description of a system, and does not exist on a fundamental level.^[8]

Ontological reductionism takes two different forms: token ontological reductionism and type ontological reductionism. Token ontological reductionism is the idea that every item that exists is a sum item. For perceivable items, it says that every perceivable item is a sum of items at a smaller level of complexity. Token ontological reduction of biological things to chemical things is generally accepted. Type ontological reductionism is the idea that every type of item is a sum type of item, and that every perceivable type of item is a sum of types of items at a lower level of complexity. Type ontological reduction of biological things to chemical things is often rejected.^[9]

Michael Ruse has criticized ontological reductionism as an improper argument against vitalism.^[10]

Reductionism in linguistics[link]

Linguistic reductionism is the idea that everything can be described in a language with a limited number of core concepts, and combinations of those concepts.

Limits of reductionism[link]

A contrast to the reductionist approach is holism or emergentism. Holism is the idea that things can have properties, (emergent properties), as a whole that are not explainable from the sum of their parts. The principle of holism was concisely summarized by Aristotle in the Metaphysics: "The whole is more than the sum of its parts".

The term greedy reductionism, coined by Daniel Dennett, is used to criticize inappropriate use of reductionism. Other authors use different language when describing the same thing.^{[citation needed]}

In philosophy[link]

The concept of downward causation poses an alternative to reductionism within philosophy. This view is developed and explored by Peter Bøgh Andersen, Claus Emmeche, Niels Ole Finnemann, and Peder Voetmann Christiansen, among others. These philosophers explore ways in which one can talk about phenomena at a larger-scale level of organization exerting causal influence on a smaller-scale level, and find that some, but not all proposed types of downward causation are compatible with science. In particular, they find that constraint is one way in which downward causation can operate.^[11] The notion of causality as constraint has also been explored as a way to shed light on scientific concepts such as self-organization, natural selection, adaptation, and control.^[12]

In science[link]

Phenomena such as emergence and work within the field of complex systems theory pose limits to reductionism.^{[citation needed]} Stuart Kauffman is one of the advocates of this viewpoint.^[13] Emergence is strongly related to nonlinearity.^[14] The limits of the application of reductionism become especially evident at levels of organization with higher amounts of complexity, including culture, neural networks, ecosystems, and other systems formed from assemblies of large numbers of interacting components.^{[citation needed]} Symmetry breaking is an example of an emergent phenomenon. Nobel laureate P.W.Anderson used this idea in his famous^{[citation needed]} paper in Science in 1972, 'More is different'^[15] to expose some of the limitations of reductionism. The limitation of reductionism was explained as follows. The sciences can be arranged roughly linearly in a hierarchy as particle physics, many body physics, chemistry, molecular biology, cellular biology, physiology, psychology and social sciences. The elementary entities of one science obeys the laws of the science that precedes it in the above hierarchy. But, this does not imply that one science is just an applied version of the science that precedes it. Quoting from the article, "At each stage, entirely new laws, concepts and generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to just as great a degree as in the previous one. Psychology is not applied biology nor is biology applied chemistry."

Disciplines such as cybernetics and systems theory strongly embrace a non-reductionist view of science, sometimes going as far as explaining phenomena at a given level of hierarchy in terms of phenomena at a higher level, in a sense, the opposite of a reductionist approach.^[16]

Free will and religion[link]

Philosophers of the Enlightenment worked to insulate human free will from reductionism. Descartes separated the material world of mechanical necessity from the world of mental free will. German philosophers introduced the concept of the "noumenal" realm that is not governed by the deterministic laws of "phenomenal" nature, where every event is completely determined by chains of causality.^[17] The most influential formulation was by Immanuel Kant, who distinguished between the causal deterministic framework the mind imposes on the world—the phenomenal realm—and the world as it exists for itself, the noumenal realm, which included free will. To insulate theology from reductionism, 19th century post-Enlightenment German theologians moved in a new direction, led by Friedrich Schleiermacher and Albrecht Ritschl. They took the Romantic approach of rooting religion in the inner world of the human spirit, so that it is a person's feeling or sensibility about spiritual matters that comprises religion.^[18]

Benefits of reduction[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

An ontological reduction reduces the number of ontological primitives that exist within an ontology. This simplifies philosophy, because every ontological primitive demands a special explanation for its existence. If one maintains that life is not a physical property, for example, then one must give a separate explanation of why some objects possess it and why others do not; this sort of process can prove to be quite complex. Additionally, one would have to prove that a primitive is actually worthy of this status, and not better defined as a variant of something else which is more basic. For example, it would be hard to defend a planet as a primitive, and it would probably be better to treat it as any other massive nonliving body, which is an example of reductionism.

On the other hand, excessive reduction can lead to oversimplification. For example, there is a clear distinction between animal life and plant life, as animals have powers that plants lack, such as sensation, active locomotion, and arguably emotion. Reducing these both to the same thing could then confuse thought involving either animals or plants. Reductionism can erase important distinctions, especially in more abstract fields of philosophy such as morality or theology. Now, not all distinctions are important. Treating white and black people as the same would usually be valid, outside of medicine, history, or cultural studies, for example. This is because, outside of such fields, it is easy to argue that there is no intrinsic difference between the two, though obviously there are possible extrinsic differences, such as traditions and culture. In cases such as this, where the difference between two things is not relevant to the topic at hand, they may be treated as the same kind of thing.

Alternatives to reductionism[link]

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In recent years, the development of systems thinking has provided methods for tackling issues in a holistic rather than a reductionist way, and many scientists approach their work in a holistic paradigm.^[19] When the terms are used in a scientific context, holism and reductionism refer primarily to what sorts of models or theories offer valid explanations of the natural world; the scientific method of falsifying hypotheses, checking empirical data against theory, is largely unchanged, but the approach guides which theories are considered. The conflict between reductionism and holism in science is not universal—it usually centers on whether or not a holistic or reductionist approach is appropriate in the context of studying a specific system or phenomenon.

In many cases (such as the kinetic theory of gases), given a good understanding of the components of the system, one can predict all the important properties of the system as a whole. In other cases, trying to do this leads to a fallacy of composition. In those systems, emergent properties of the system are almost impossible to predict from knowledge of the parts of the system. Complexity theory studies such systems.

Alfred North Whitehead set his metaphysical thinking in opposition to reductionism. He refers to this as the 'fallacy of the misplaced concreteness'. His scheme set out to frame a rational, general understanding of things, that was derived from our reality.

The reductionist strategy or any method of simplification in scientific disciplines risks overlooking or negating awareness that already exists. Chaos theory, the concept of entropy in study of chemistry, and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in particle physics, all indicate that knowledge and cognition of the world becomes more complex as the level of awareness of it increases.^{[improper synthesis?]}

Scientists who use reductionist methods often take an approach that relies on contradicting previous contributions in their own context to science in order to validate a new theory, when sometimes there is no need to disprove existing theories in order to provide new insight. Proving a theory to be invalid and proving a new assumption to be true must both take place on their own merits. Scientific theories that are half-valid and half-invalid can be entirely brushed aside with reductionism, whereas with a holistic paradigm such as additivism, one can add the half-valid parts to updated assumptions. A reductionist would be less likely to view currently invalid theories as valid contributions in the context in which they were observed, utilized and presented, whereas a complexity theorist would be more likely to.^{[citation needed]}

Sven Erik Jorgensen, an ecologist, lays out both theoretical and practical arguments for a holistic approach in certain areas of science, especially ecology. He argues that many systems are so complex that it will not ever be possible to describe all their details. Drawing an analogy to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in physics, he argues that many interesting and relevant ecological phenomena cannot be replicated in laboratory conditions, and thus cannot be measured or observed without influencing and changing the system in some way. He also points to the importance of interconnectedness in biological systems. His viewpoint is that science can only progress by outlining what questions are unanswerable and by using models that do not attempt to explain everything in terms of smaller hierarchical levels of organization, but instead model them on the scale of the system itself, taking into account some (but not all) factors from levels both higher and lower in the hierarchy.^[20]

See also[link]

Thinking portal

• Antireductionism
• Aristotle
• Eliminativism
• Emergentism
• Holism
• Materialism
• Multiple realizability was used as a source of arguments against reductionism.
• Philosophy of Mind
• Physicalism
• Physical ontology
• Scientism
• Systems theory
• Symmetry breaking
• Theology

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Dawkins, Richard (1976), The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press; 2nd edition, December 1989.
• Descartes (1637), Discourses, Part V.
• Dupre, John (1993), The Disorder of Things. Harvard University Press.
• Jones, Richard H. (2000), Reductionism: Analysis and the Fullness of Reality. Bucknell University Press.
• Laughlin, Robert (2005), A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down. Basic Books.
• Nagel, Ernest (1961), The Structure of Science. New York.
• Ruse, Michael (1988), Philosophy of Biology. Albany, NY.
• Dennett, Daniel. (1995) Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Simon & Schuster.
• Fritjof Capra (1982), The Turning Point.
• Alexander Rosenberg (2006), Darwinian Reductionism or How to Stop Worrying and Love Molecular Biology. University of Chicago Press.
• Steven Pinker (2002), The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Viking Penguin.
• Stephen Weinberg (1992), Dreams of a Final Theory: The Scientist's Search for the Ultimate Laws of Nature, Pantheon Books.
• Steven Weinberg (2002) describes what he terms the culture war among physicists in his review of A New Kind of Science.
• Eric Scerri The reduction of chemistry to physics has become a central aspect of the philosophy of chemistry. See several articles by this author.
• Lopez, F., Il pensiero olistico di Ippocrate. Riduzionismo, antiriduzionismo, scienza della complessità nel trattato sull'Antica Medicina, vol. IIA, Ed. Pubblisfera, Cosenza Italy 2008.

External links[link]

Look up reductionism in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Ingo Brigandt and Alan Love, "Reductionism in Biology" in: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• John Dupré: The Disunity of Science-- an interview at the Galilean Library covering criticisms of reductionism.

Viktor Emil Frankl
Born	(1905-03-26)March 26, 1905 Vienna
Died	September 2, 1997(1997-09-02) (aged 92) Vienna
Cause of death	Heart Failure
Nationality	Austrian
Known for	Logotherapy, Existential Analysis
Religion	Jewish

Viktor Emil Frankl M.D., Ph.D. (March 26, 1905, Leopoldstadt, Vienna – September 2, 1997, Vienna)^[1][2]was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor. Frankl was the founder of logotherapy, which is a form of Existential Analysis, the "Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy". His best-selling book, Man's Search for Meaning (published under a different title in 1959: From Death-Camp to Existentialism, and originally published in 1946 as Trotzdem Ja Zum Leben Sagen: Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager), chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate based on his psychotherapeutic method of finding meaning in all forms of existence, even the most sordid ones, and thus a reason to continue living. Frankl was one of the key figures in existential therapy and a prominent source of inspiration for humanistic psychologists.^[3]

Life before 1945[link]

Frankl was born in Vienna into a Jewish family of civil servants (Beamtenfamilie). His interest in psychology surfaced early. For the final exam (Matura) in Gymnasium, he wrote a paper on the psychology of philosophical thinking. After graduating from Gymnasium in 1923, he studied medicine at the University of Vienna and later specialized in neurology and psychiatry, concentrating on the topics of depression and suicide. His early development was influenced by his contacts with Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler, although he would later diverge from their teachings.^[3][4]

Doctor, therapist[link]

During part of 1924 he became the president of the Sozialistische Mittelschüler Österreich, Social Democratic youth movement for high school students throughout Austria.^[1]:59

From 1928 to 1930 while still a medical student, he organized and offered a special program to counsel high school students free of charge, with the participation of psychologists such as Charlotte Buhler, and paying special attention at the time when the students received their report cards. In 1931, not a single Viennese student committed suicide. The success of this program grabbed the attention of the likes of Wilhelm Reich who invited him to Berlin.^[5][4][2]

From 1933 to 1937 Viktor Frankl completed his residency in Neurology and Psychiatry at the Steinhof Psychiatric Hospital in Vienna. He was responsible for the so-called Selbstmörderpavillon, or "suicide pavilion". Here, he treated over 30,000 women prone to suicide.^[2]

In 1937, he established an independent private practice in Neurology and Psychiatry at Alser Strasse 32/12 (Vienna)^[2]

Starting from the Nazi takeover of Austria in 1938, he was prohibited from treating "Aryan" patients due to his Jewish identity. In 1940 he started working at the Rothschild Hospital, where he headed its neurological department. This hospital, at the time, was the only one in Vienna to which Jews were still admitted. Several times, his medical opinions saved patients from being euthanised via the Nazi euthanasia program. In December 1941 he married Tilly Grosser.^[3][2]

Prisoner, therapist[link]

On September 25, 1942 he, along with his wife and his parents, was deported to the Nazi Theresienstadt Ghetto. There Frankl worked as a general practitioner in a clinic until his skills in psychiatry were noticed, being then assigned to in the psychiatric care ward, heading the Neurology and Psychiatry clinic in block B IV, establishing a camp service of "psychohygiene" or mental health care. He organized a unit to help newcomers to the camp overcome shock and grief. Later on, assisted by Regina Jonas among others, he set up a "suicide watch" unit.^[2][6] On July 29, 1943, he organized a closed event for the Scientific Society at Theresienstadt, and with the help of Leo Baeck he offered a series of open lectures on topics like "Sleep and Sleep Disturbances", "Body and Soul", "Medical Care of the Soul", "Psychology of Mountaineering", "How to keep my nerves healthy?", "Medical ministry", "Existential Problems in Psychotherapy", and "Social Psychotherapy".^[6]. Frankl's father, Gabriel, died of pulmonary edema and pneumonia at Theresienstadt.^[6][3][2]

On October 19, 1944, Frankl, with his wife, Tilly, was transported to a Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz, where he was processed and then he was moved to Kaufering, a Nazi concentration camp affiliated with Dachau, where he arrived on October 25, 1944. There he was to spend 5 months working as a "slave-laborer". In March, 1945, he was offered to be moved to the so called rest-camp Türkheim, also affiliated with Dachau. He decided to go to Türkheim, where he worked as a doctor until April 27, 1945, when Frankl was liberated by the Americans.^[3][2]

Meanwhile, his wife, Tilly, was transferred from Auschwitzto the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where she perished. His mother, Elsa, was killed by the Nazis in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, and his brother, Walter, died working in a mine part of Auschwitz. Apart from him, among Frank's immediate relatives, the only survivor of the Holocaust was his sister, Stella, who had escaped from Austria by emigrating to Australia.^[3][2]

Life after 1945[link]

Liberated after three years in concentration camps, he returned to Vienna. During 1945 he wrote his world-famous book titled Trotzdem Ja Zum Leben Sagen: Ein Psychologe Erlebt das Konzentrationslager (translated: "...Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp", known in English by the title Man's Search for Meaning (1959). In this book, he described the life of an ordinary concentration camp inmate from the objective perspective of a psychiatrist.^{[3] [7]}

It was due to his and others' suffering in these camps that he validated his hallmark conclusion that even in the most absurd, painful and dehumanized situation, life has potential meaning and that therefore even suffering is meaningful. This conclusion served as a strong basis for Viktor Frankl's Logotherapy and Existential Analysis, which Frankl had described before WWII.

An example of Frankl's idea of finding meaning in the midst of extreme suffering is found in his account of an experience he had while working in the harsh conditions of the Nazi's concentration camps:

We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us."

That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way—an honorable way—in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."^[7]:36-38

Frankl's concentration camp experiences thus shaped both his therapeutic approach and philosophical outlook, as reflected in his seminal publications. He often said that even within the narrow boundaries of the concentration camps he found only two races of men to exist: decent and unprincipled ones. These were to be found in all classes, ethnicities, and groups.^[7]

In 1946 he was appointed to run the Vienna Polyclinic of Neurology. He remained there until 1971. In 1947 he married his second wife Eleonore Katharina Schwindt. She was a practicing Catholic and the couple respected each other's religious backgrounds, going to both church and synagogue, and celebrating Christmas and Hanukah. They had one daughter, Gabriele, who went on to become a Child Psychologist.^[3][8][2]

In 1955 he was awarded a professorship of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Vienna, and as visiting professor, he resided at Harvard University (1961), at Southern Methodist University, Dallas (1966), Duquesne University, Pittsburgh (1972).^[4] He lectured and taught seminars all over the world and received 29 honorary doctorate degrees.^[4][8]Frankl published more than 32 books (many translated into 40 languages).^[4]

The American Psychiatric Association awarded Viktor Frankl the 1985 Oskar Pfister Award (for important contributions to religion and psychiatry)^[1]

Frankl died on September 2, 1997, of heart failure.^[9] He was survived by his wife Eleonore, his daughter Dr. Gabriele Frankl-Vesely, his grandchildren Katharina and Alexander, and his great-granddaughter Anna Viktoria.^[10]

Legacy[link]

Viktor Frankl's Logotherapy and Existential Analysis is considered the third Viennese School of Psychotherapy,^[4] among the broad category that comprises existentialists.^[11] For Irvin Yalom, Frankl, "who has devoted his career to a study of an existential approach to therapy, has apparently concluded that the lack of meaning is the paramount existential stress. To him, existential neurosis is synonymous with a crisis of meaninglessness".^[11]

He is thought to have coined the term Sunday Neurosis referring to a form of anxiety resulting from an awareness in some people of the emptiness of their lives once the working week is over.^[12]Some complain of a void and a vague discontent.^[11]This arises from an existential vacuum, or feeling of meaninglessness, which is a common phenomenon and is characterised by the subjective state of boredom, apathy, and emptiness. One feels cynical, lacks direction and questions the point of most of life's activities.^[11]

Viktor Frankl once recommended that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast of the United States be complemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast:

Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.^[13]

There are reportedly plans to construct such a statue.^[14]

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Frankl, Viktor Man's Search for Meaning. An Introduction to Logotherapy, Beacon Press, Boston, MA, 2006. ISBN 978-0-8070-1427-1
• Frankl, Viktor On the Theory and Therapy of Mental Disorders. An Introduction to Logotherapy and Existential Analysis, Translated by James M. DuBois. Brunner-Routledge, London-New York, 2004. ISBN 0-415-95029-5
• Frankl, Viktor Psychotherapy and Existentialism. Selected Papers on Logotherapy, Simon & Schuster,New York, 1967. ISBN 0-671-20056-9
• Frankl, Viktor The Will to Meaning. Foundations and Applications of Logotherapy,New American Library, New York, 1988 ISBN 0-452-01034-9
• Frankl, Viktor The Unheard Cry for Meaning. Psychotherapy and Humanism, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2011 ISBN 978-1-4516-6438-6
• Frankl, Viktor Viktor Frankl Recollections: An Autobiography.; Basic Books, Cambridge, MA 2000. ISBN 978-0-7382-0355-3.
• Frankl, Viktor Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning. (A revised and extended edition of The Unconscious God; with a Foreword by Swanee Hunt). Perseus Book Publishing, New York, 1997; ISBN 0-306-45620-6. Paperback edition: Perseus Book Group; New York, July 2000; ISBN 0-7382-0354-8.

See also[link]

• Logotherapy
• Existential Analysis

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Viktor Frankl

• Viktor and I, the Film 2011
• Viktor Frankl Institute Vienna
• Viktor Frankl Institute of Logotherapy

Stuart Kauffman in April 2010.

Stuart Alan Kauffman (September 28, 1939) is an American theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher who studies the origin of life on Earth. In 1971 Kauffman proposed the self-organized emergence of collectively autocatalytic sets of polymers, specifically peptides, for the origin of molecular reproduction.^[1][2] Reproducing peptide, DNA, and RNA collectively autocatalytic sets have now been made experimentally.^[3][4] He is best known for arguing that the complexity of biological systems and organisms might result as much from self-organization and far-from-equilibrium dynamics as from Darwinian natural selection, as well as for applying models of Boolean networks to simplified genetic circuits. His hypotheses stating that cell types are attractors of such networks, and that genetic regulatory networks are "critical" have found experimental support.^[5][6]

Biography[link]

Kauffman graduated from Dartmouth in 1960, was awarded the BA (Hons) by Oxford University (where he was a Marshall Scholar) in 1963, and completed a medical degree (M.D.) at the University of California, San Francisco in 1968. After completing his residency in Emergency Medicine, he moved into developmental genetics of the fruitfly, holding appointments first at the University of Chicago, then at the University of Pennsylvania from 1975 to 1995, where he rose to Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics. Kauffman held a MacArthur Fellowship, 1987–1992.

Kauffman rose to prominence through his association with the Santa Fe Institute (a non-profit research institute dedicated to the study of complex systems), where he was faculty in residence from 1986 to 1997, and through his work on models in various areas of biology. These included autocatalytic sets in origin of life research, gene regulatory networks in developmental biology, and fitness landscapes in evolutionary biology. Kauffman holds the founding broad biotechnology patents in combinatorial chemistry and applied molecular evolution.^[7]

In 1996, Kauffman started BiosGroup, a Santa Fe, New Mexico-based for-profit company that applied complex systems methodology to business problems. BiosGroup was acquired by NuTech Solutions^[8] in early 2003. NuTech was bought by Netezza in 2008.

From 2004 to 2009 Kauffman held a joint appointment at the University of Calgary in Biological Sciences and Physics and Astronomy. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Calgary. He is an iCORE (Informatics Research Circle of Excellence) ^[9] chair and the director of the Institute for Biocomplexity and Informatics.

In January 2009 Kauffman became a Finland Distinguished Professor (FiDiPro) at Tampere University of Technology, Department of Signal Processing. The appointment is until the end of 2012. The subject of the FiDiPro research project is the development of delayed stochastic models of genetic regulatory networks based on gene expression data at the single molecule level.^[10]

In January 2010 Kauffman joined the University of Vermont faculty where he will continue his work with UVM's Complex Systems Center.^[11] He is also an adviser to the Microbes Mind Forum.

Work[link]

Kauffman is best known for arguing that the complexity of biological systems and organisms might result as much from self-organization and far-from-equilibrium dynamics as from Darwinian natural selection.

Some biologists and physicists working in Kauffman's area reserve judgment on Kauffman's claims about self-organization and evolution. A case in point is the introduction to the 2002 book "Self Organization in Biological Systems".^[12] Kauffman's recent work translates his biological findings to the mind body problem and issues in neuroscience, proposing attributes of a new "poised realm" that hovers indefinitely between quantum coherence and classicality. Kauffman published on this topic in Answering Descartes: Beyond Turing.^[13] With colleagues Giuseppe Longo and Maël Montévil, Stuart Kauffman wrote (January 2012) "No entailing laws, but enablement in the evolution of the biosphere,"^[14] which aims to show that evolution is not law entailed, as is physics, and that, without selection, evolution enables its own future possibilities.

Publications[link]

Select bibliography

• 1993, Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution, Oxford University Press, Technical monograph. ISBN 0-19-507951-5
• 1995, At Home in the Universe：The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity. Oxford University Press.
• 2000, Investigations. Oxford University Press.
• 2008, Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion. [Basic Books] - ISBN 0-465-00300-1

Selected articles

• 1969, "Metabolic stability and epigenesis in randomly constructed genetic nets," in: Journal of Theoretical Biology, 22:437–467, 1969.
• 1991, "Antichaos and Adaptation," in: Scientific American, August 1991.
• 2004, "Prolegomenon to a General Biology", in William A. Dembski, Michael Ruse, eds., Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA, Cambridge University Press.
• 2004, "Autonomous Agents", in John D. Barrow, P.C.W. Davies, and C.L. Harper Jr., eds., Science and Ultimate Reality: Quantum Theory, Cosmology, and Complexity, Cambridge University Press.

About Stuart Kauffman

• MacKenzie, Dana (2002). "The Science of Surprise", Discover Magazine, Vol. 23, No. 2, 59–63, February 2002.
• Kauffman about Kauffman: (Video)
• Goldstein, Jeffrey A. (2008). Book Review of "Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion", by Stuart Kauffman. In Emergence: Complexity & Organization, 10(3), 117–130.
• Di Bernardo, M., I sentieri evolutivi della complessità biologica nell'opera di S. A. Kauffman, Mimesis, Milano 2011.

References[link]

External links[link]

• An online chat with Stuart Kauffman on a complexity organization website.
• Video presentation "The adjacent possible" by Kauffman on autonomous agents.
• Biocomplexity and Informatics iCORE Chair.
• Beyond reductionism: Reinventing The Sacred, paper by Kauffman on reductionism.
• Video presentation "Reinventing The Sacred" Stuart Kauffman on his new book. Video talk for a Conference in Doha, Katar, produced, May 17.2008
• SYNCD.org Stuart Kauffman about the need of a "transnational mythic structure"
• Tech Nation discussion with Dr. Moira Gunn on his book "Reinventing the Sacred" (recorded June 6, 2008).
• "God enough" by Steve Paulson Interview with Stuart Kauffman (2008).
• Stuart Kauffman homepage at Tampere University of Technology
• Kauffman's lecture videos at Tampere in April 2010
• "From physics to semiotics" (Kauffman's seminar in the Dept. of Semiotics of the University of Tartu on April 27, 2012)