reductionism

Definition

Material world-view in which complex phenomenon is broken down into conceptual chunks small enough to be analyzed or measured. The basis of all analysis, reductionism is useful in understanding inanimate things or simple systems. This philosophy (specially when taken to extreme), however, dismisses environment as merely a set of resources to be consumed, and human beings as tools to be manipulated and exploited. It is opposite of holism based on the philosophy that a whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and that the nature of a thing or a complex system cannot be understood by breaking it apart but by looking at in its totality.