[sciborg2]

Who knows what: For decades the sciences and the humanities have fought for knowledge supremacy. Both sides are wrong-headed

"Before we can see where Wilson and his followers go wrong, we need to make a distinction between two meanings of reductionism. There is ontological reduction, which has to do with what exists, and epistemic reduction, which has to do with what we know. The first one is the idea that the bottom level of reality (say, quarks, or strings) is causally sufficient to account for everything else (atoms, cells, you and me, planets, galaxies and so forth). Epistemic reductionism, on the other hand, claims that knowledge of the bottom level is sufficient to reconstruct knowledge of everything else. It holds that we will eventually be able to derive a quantum mechanical theory of planetary motions and of the genius of Shakespeare."

[sciborg2]

http://seedmagazine.com/twocultures/

50th Anniversary of the "Two Cultures": Where are we now?

It's 50 years after C.P. Snow first described a chasm between literary intellectuals and scientists. Snow's words touched off decades of debate on both the existence of the "Two Cultures" and the possibility of a "Third Culture" — a group that could bridge the gap between scientists and humanists. Seed asked six thinkers where we are now: Whether the Two Cultures are still divided, and what role the Third Culture plays in shaping our understanding of the world.

[sciborg2]

And then the All-Father himself stepped into the frey fray:

R.Scott Bakker: Who’s Afraid of Reduction? Massimo Pigliucci and the Rhetoric of Redemption:

http://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/whos-afraid-of-reduction-massimo-pigliucci-and-the-rhetoric-of-redemption/

"In “Who Knows What,” his epistemological defense of the humanities, Pigliucci reveals what I think is just such a defensive, dismissive attitude, one that seeks to shelter what amounts to ignorance in accusations of ignorance, to redeem what institutional insiders want to believe under the auspices of being ‘skeptical.’ I urge everyone reading this to take a few moments to carefully consider the piece, form judgments one way or another, because in what follows, I hope to show you how his entire case is actually little more than a mirage, and how his skepticism is as strategic as anything to ever come out of Big Oil or Tobacco."