Tossup
Kemeny and Oppenheim’s “indirect” view of this process was one of many classified by Kenneth Schaffner. Explanation and this process conflict with empiricism according to a paper that coined the term “incommensurable” by Paul Feyerabend. Ernest Nagel’s model of this process uses “bridge laws” to link scientific theories. An “ism” named for this process is divided into “good” and “greedy” versions in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea and follows the analytic-synthetic distinction as the second of Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism.” This word denotes the process of explaining a complex phenomenon via a more fundamental one, which is often used in a negative sense to imply oversimplification. For 10 points, a logical fallacy is named for doing what process “to absurdity,” or ad absurdum? ■END■
ANSWER: reduction [or word forms such as reducing or reductive; accept scientific reduction; accept greedy reductionism; accept reductio ad absurdum] (Feyerabend’s paper is “Explanation, Reduction, and Empiricism.”)
<TM, Philosophy>
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