Schaffner K F
Science. 1967 Aug 11;157(3789):644-7. doi: 10.1126/science.157.3789.644.
My general conclusion, then, is that, given the current state of biological science, there may be good heuristic reasons for not attempting in all possible areas to develop physicochemical explanations of biological phenomena, and good reasons for attempting to formulate specifically biological theories. This, however, is an argument which supports an irreducibility thesis for methodological reasons. Any attempt to twist this into a claim of real irreducibility for all time is, in the light of recent work in molecular biology, logically untenable, empirically unwarranted, and heuristically useless.
那么，我的总体结论是，鉴于生物科学的当前状态，可能存在很好的启发式理由，说明不必在所有可能的领域尝试对生物现象进行物理化学解释，同时也有很好的理由尝试构建专门的生物学理论。然而，这是一个基于方法论原因支持不可还原论的论点。根据分子生物学的最新研究，任何试图将此歪曲为永远真正不可还原的主张，在逻辑上是站不住脚的，在经验上是没有根据的，在启发式方面也是无用的。
