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It is reasonable to note that a reductionist and totalitarian exercise like that conducted by the ideologue may have some pedagogical uses, in addition to whatever light it might shed on the heretofore forbidden. It can provide its adherents with some discipline, as it is useful to learn how to organize arguments according to a principle. The requirement for logical coherency thereby demanded can aid in the development of intellectual rigor, as the arguments thus organized must exist with one another coherently and memorably. It can be an effective exercise in rhetoric—the art of persuasive and effective use of language. Ultimately, however, it’s a failure, because the world is too complex for its many manifestations to be reduced to a single cause. It becomes an exercise in post-hoc rationalization, rather than an attempt to understand, predict and control (the proof of understanding). It’s camouflage, façade and fraud. It looks like analysis. It sounds like thought. But it’s just an algorithm: content in, machine-like rules applied, wisdom out. Technically, in fact, it’s the equivalent of a compression algorithm, and a biased one, at that. It simplifies the world, as all systems of category simplify the world, but it does so in part by simply ignoring those elements of reality that are not easily explained by the theory. This is a parody of the use of reductionism in science. Scientists have a rule: Do not multiply explanatory concepts beyond necessity. Or, as Einstein said, “explanations should be as simple as possible (but no simpler).” The test for the utility of a simple explanation is its ability, not to account for the past, and not to be merely logically coherent, but to actually predict something that will happen in the future—within, let it be noted, a specified and definable time frame. Furthermore, to simplify something properly the simplification should sample the domain it is attempting to account for in a manner that equally samples all of it, so that the simplified version (like a low-resolution photo) does not purposefully or accidentally exclude anything of true but undesirable importance.
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