Abstract

VINIEGRA-VELAZQUEZ, Leonardo. Criticism of mechanistic causality in life sciences. Bol. Med. Hosp. Infant. Mex. [online]. 2019, vol.76, n.4, pp.155-166.  Epub Mar 13, 2020. ISSN 1665-1146.  https://doi.org/10.24875/bmhim.19000166.

The reductionist empiricism (RE) underlying the current scientific habitus by imposing mechanistic causality (MC) as an explanatory principle of life sciences has obscured the understanding of the life process by equating it with that of a machine. The shapes ideas can take within knowledge are analyzed: as paradigms (anthropocentric and of disjunction, reduction and simplification), implicit logics of human ways of thinking and acting, and as comprehensive-explanatory theories. It is proposed that, by dismissing the ideas, the RE supplants the biological significance of what is observed by the statistical significance of the MC and the linear and probabilistic mathematics. It is argued that objectivity does not derive from experimental control, but from an interpretative framework pertinent to the type of events being studied and that the conviction that objectivity lies in the method of observation constitutes a myth of the RE that circumvents paradigms and its influence. Contextual causality is proposed and contrasted with the MC to highlight its limitations to explain the ungraspable biological complexity. The coincidence of the ongoing collapse of civilization and the apotheosis of reductionist science justifies dismissing it as mostly indifferent, ominous, impotent, accommodating or complicit with the dominance of profit interests without limits that degrade everything. It is concluded that it is time for resolutions: integrate with forces that aim, in various ways, to counteract this dominance and preserve our common habitat or to continue with the suicidal individualist complicity of “each their due and every man for himself.”

Keywords : Life sciences; Reductionist empiricism; Mechanistic causality; Paradigm; Objectivity; Contextual causality; Collapse of civilization.

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