Tollaksen is a researcher concentrating in the field of reverse causality, the idea that both the past and the future affect the present. His results, if fully accepted, defy any sort of reductionist explanation. A necessary reductionist viewpoint -- a reductionist assumption a holist might say -- is the flow of time, and all particles trapped therein, from low entropy to high. Causality is central to reductionism. Yet, in Tollaksen's experiment, by the time the decisions -- the causal phenomena -- are made, the measurements -- the affected phenomena -- are not only already over but all the reduced elements involved with those measurements already dissipated, destroyed, or gone wherever it is photons go when physicists are done with them. Tollaksen's experiment suggests that Pascal's barometer reads 30 inches of mercury not just because of what the atmospheric pressure is (at which it arrived by being what it was) but also because of what the atmospheric pressure will yet be.
Of course, it is impossible to say that reductionism should be discarded. Approach to holistic understanding begins necessarily with reductionist understanding of individual elements. Who could hope to understand the recent recession without knowing about credit swaps? Where would Tollaksen be if he had never been to Physics 101?
Hempel approaches the problem of scientific method correctly by requiring standardized, logical rules to ensure repeatability. Yet this logical approach is not irreconcilable with holism. Holism's detractors might say that holism "threatens to make testing impossible," and certainly it moves science from a realm of simple, laboratory experiments, into a universe...
In that sense, he was a victim of his time period. He may have felt very differently if he were alive today, because science, technology, and even the study of metaphysics have advanced a great deal. Hempel was a scientist, but he was a bit of a philosopher, as well (Sarkar & Pfeifer, 2006). That is a large part of the reason why his opinions on the issue seem odd.
Scientific Explanation Must every scientific explanation contain a law of nature? For those who support the Deductive-Nomological Account, the answer is yes. Discuss critically the arguments for and against this view, and present your own analysis of which is stronger. Date of Submittal Must every scientific explanation contain a law of nature? For those who support the Deductive-Nomological Account, the answer is yes. Discuss critically the arguments for and against this view, and
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