Across the scientific fields

Philip Anderson argues that although reductionism is the effective way to do science, it does not necessarily lead to an understanding of the whole:

"The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe."

P. Anderson, More is different, in Science (1972), vol. 177.

For him, science is fundamental not only at the level of particles but also at every higher and more complex levels: an object, a fluid, an ocean, a body, a society, Earth, the Universe:

"The behavior of large and complex aggregates of elementary particles, it turns out, is not to be understood in terms of a simple extrapolation of the properties of a few particles. Instead, at each level of complexity entirely new properties appear, and the understanding of the new behaviors requires research which I think is as fundamental in its nature as any other."

P. Anderson, More is different, in Science (1972), vol. 177.

This point of view of science(s) has also been recently expressed by Edward O. Wilson in his book Consilience. and Ian Stewart in his book Does God play dice?.