Reductionist Paradigm Research Articles

Consider the uncertainty: Holistic and reductionist considerations in spinal cord stimulation trial and permanent implantation

Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) technology is based upon reductionist aspects of the gate-control theory, but reductionism, per se, is not a com­ prehensive model for explaining pain as a dynamic process that is personal, private, and subjective. Likewise, the breadth of gate control theory is not fully captured by reductionist thought and its broad implica­ tions for clinical practice may not be fully appreciated. Thus, there is a need to examine the full scope of gate control with different explanatory models. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in physics demonstrates that reality can never be objectively grasped because the observer, with his or her technology, always affects the observed [5]. Biomedicine is the primary language in our culture [7], and the treatment of pain is largely influenced, per­ haps lopsidedly, by the sociocultural web of reductionist thought that underlies it. The holistic paradigm, proposed by Cassidy [3], is a model that holds considerable power for examining aspects of gate control that are uncaptured in a reductionist model. Reductionist and holistic paradigms, respectively, endorse the processes of objec­ tification versus personification, either/or versus both/and thinking, hierarchical versus cooperative approach, future versus past time orientation, and cure versus manage­ ment. Utilizing these two explanatory paradigms, our efforts will be focused upon examining the selection pro­ cess in implantable SCS, with recommendations based upon consistent application of gate control theory. Nelson and colleagues have noted the limitations of explanatory models for understanding chronic pain. If we accept that the current state of modern physics

Challenging a reductionistic paradigm as a foundation for nursing.

Historically, nursing practice has been grounded in the objective, analytic philosophy of the natural sciences. Over the past decades, caring--a humanistic concept--has been espoused as the essence of nursing. Paradoxically, practice based on the theme of caring remains aligned with the philosophy of the natural sciences and continues to use tools such as nursing process and nursing diagnosis, products of the natural sciences paradigm. The authors have outlined the foundation for a philosophy of caring. The encounter between caregiver and patient is the central aspect of this philosophy and is elaborated with the related concepts of openness, nonreductionism, immediacy, and meaning. In addition, holistic nursing practice requires attention by caregivers to their own self-awareness and the personal growth that is necessary for the demands of encountering patients. Practice based on such a philosophy maintains the primacy of the caregiver-patient relationship and permits the incorporation of analytic tools without depersonalizing effects.

On correspondence, line tokens and missing tokens

In this article, the authors expand on some of their previous work on correspondence and propose a system that can correspond in the presence of both point and line tokens, or a mix of them. It can also work if some tokens present in one frame are not present in the other. The proposed algorithm is an amalgamation of reductionist and holist paradigms. We establish that properties which remain invariant for whole image sequences and sequences consisting of corresponding parts from each image frame can be used to establish correspondence. Extensive computer simulation results on synthesised data as well as real image sequences are presented to validate our claims.

Lowi's Critique of Political Science: A Response

Sometimes an emotional irritant can be intellectually productive and provocative. For me, this was the case with Theodore Lowi's APSA presidential address, reprinted in the American Political Science Review (Lowi 1992). While disagreeing at many points with Lowi's account of the development of political science and with his critiques of the currently “hegemonic” subfields of “public opinion, public policy, and public choice,” I am led ultimately to clarify my own understanding of the relationship between politics, ideology, and science. This response to Lowi's address is intended to sketch a different view of the relation between science, especially social science, and government; to argue with Lowi's assessment of the value of reductionist paradigms such as those employed by the three hegemonic subfields; and to say that many of the rest of us are passionate about politics too. In particular, it is intended to indicate how “public choice,” my own favored member of that holy trinity, is in fact well suited to address issues critical to the matters of social value with which Lowi is concerned.

Letters to the Editor

L E T T E R S T O T H E E D I T O R Whole Language In an article entitled, "Some Concerns about Using Whole Language Approaches With Deaf Children" (American Annals of the Deaf July 1992), David Dolman offers the view that deaf children would be better served by a transmission teaching model based on drills and basal readers than by whole language. He lists some of the suppositions behind the whole language movement and counters them with suppositions from the traditional skills and basais camp. However, in an apparent bid to avoid offending whole language proponents, he suggests that some components of whole language might be retained. This is precisely why defending whole language is difficult. To those from whom it must be defended, whole language is an approach that they invariably suggest be combined with existing materials or approaches to make a "safe" eclectic mix that won't offend. The problem with this view is that whole language is not an approach but a philosophy, which includes, as Dolman indicates, such tenets as "the assumption that students are born to succeed rather than fail and that reading and writing are done for real purposes" (p. 281). Whole language also encompasses theory and includes theories of language learning that have come to be accepted as truisms. Few people would deny, for example, that language is "personal" and "driven by a need to communicate," and "shaped toward societal norms," or that "language is empowering" (p. 279). Thus, those who seek to hang on to traditional ways of teaching find it difficult to dispute whole language in its entirety and try to meld it into something that will fit within their own biases. However, as a philosophy, whole language will not mesh with other approaches or materials, and the whole language tenets cited by Dolman are some of the very tenets that cannot be combined with the skills and drills, transmission model of teaching that Dolman seeks to defend. What Dolman and proponents of the eclectic position fail to understand is that two disparate paradigms encompass these views of teaching—the holistic paradigm and the reductionistic or mechanistic paradigm —and the two do not mix. For example , if one truly believes that children are born into the world trying to make sense of the world in their own way, one cannot also condone the linear, preprogrammed menu of basais and work sheets based on the assumption that the child will be ready at a predetermined time to focus on the information selected by the program. As another example, let us look at two views of how reading occurs. In the bottom-up model espoused by proponents of basais and skill building, reading is a process of addressing each letter and each word separately, gradually building toward a message. Proponents of whole language see reading as a process of drawing on past knowledge to predict the message, with minimal attention to the print. It is not possible to operate on both premises simultaneously, and the mixed instructional messages provided by the two paradigms would in all likelihood have a detrimental effect, particularly on young readers. Thus, the argument can be clarified by looking at the issues as a skills approach versus whole language, rather than the comfortable "try anything" stance that appeases educators and confuses children. For his refutation of whole language, Dolman draws in part upon the ethnocentric assumptions of King and Quigley (1985), which are typical of most hearing researchers, that "Hearing provides many of the requisite skills necessary to master reading and writing " (Dolman, p. 279) and that beginning readers need special help in learning to decode words (p. 280). For many years hearing researchers have assumed that the process of reading and writing must be acquired through the auditory channel because that seems to them to be the way they acquired literacy. Dolman also takes the position of King and Quigley that the use of syntactically simplified basais is appropriate for deaf children. From a holistic perspective, it is important to go to the source—in this case, deaf people themselves—to discover what the process looks like. In this regard , it is...

Suicide and Science: Challenging Reductionist Paradigms

Suicide and Science: Challenging Reductionist Paradigms

Osteopathic research: the needed paradigm shift.

The purposes of this article are twofold: (1) To assist scientists on the faculties of colleges of osteopathic medicine in the design of research projects relevant to osteopathic medical theory and practice; and (2) to assist clinical investigators in the development of research protocols that are best suited to the assessment of clinical outcomes of osteopathic medical practice. Toward this end, the central osteopathic medical principles are heuristically interpreted and elaborated, with the intention of facilitating the formulation of fundamental questions by researchers in the various biomedical disciplines and the design of clinical research projects by osteopathic physicians. A few of the questions evoked by such elaboration of the osteopathic medical principles and awaiting study are suggested for consideration by researchers. Such research questions require and, in part, compose a research paradigm that differs basically from, yet complements and "completes," the prevailing and highly productive reductionist paradigm. It is, in the original sense of the word, a "holistic" paradigm that places emphasis on the organismic context in which the biological mechanisms exist and operate. Conventional clinical research protocols for the assessment of efficacy of most chemical and physical therapeutic agents are ill-suited for the assessment of osteopathic medical care, of manipulative treatment in particular. It is emphasized that osteopathic medical care must be evaluated as it is practiced and not as a contrived, unreal version; and that it must be tested as a derivative of, and in the context of, that philosophy by criteria consonant with that philosophy.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Bilingual Special Education and This Special Issue

Bilingual special education is a new discipline that has emerged because of the problems faced by linguistic minorities with the conduct of special education. As current research studies indicate, the progress and innovations ushered in by P. L. 94–142 have not been extended to linguistic minorities, particularly Hispanic children. This special issue suggests that the medical-model, reductionistic paradigm underpinning special education is inimical to bilingual pupils. It proposes a paradigm shift and a redefinition of bilingual special education.

Environmental science and environmental philosophy: part 2 environmental science and the coming social Paradigm

Several futurologist and environmentalist writers1–3 have called for a fundamental shift in Western philosophical thought, an end to the present reductionist paradigm, and the development of a new holistic, environmentally‐conscious society. It is said that this process will involve the redefinition of many social concepts, including those of Growth, Wealth, Work and Power. There is a relationship between the philosophical basis of this call for a shift to a new social paradigm, and that of modern environmentalism, especially in its more radical manifestations. Ideas which contribute to the radical environmentalist critique of present society are in turn related to the anthropology of tribal societies, to the writings of 19th century radicals and revolutionaries, to the cosmologies of pre‐capitalist and pre‐scientific cultures, and to the emerging interest in environmental matters on the part of (eco)feminists. A synthesis of these ideas with some existing scientific concepts, provides the basis for the development of a new (Environmental) science which is no longer tethered to the present reductionist paradigm.