We humans have a somewhat macabre tendency chop things into little bits in an attempt to understand them. In fact, modern western society is uncommonly proud of the knowledge we have gained from our scientific methods. We have set ourselves up at the top of the pyramid as the experts- the authority figure on science and technology that defines how the world turns and have reduced the role of Mother Nature to that of a bit player.
This reductionism has proved very useful to us. By chopping things up into smaller and smaller parts, assigning them a particular function in the scheme of things and then categorizing them, we do our best to deduce the ‘rules’ by which the world and mother nature are supposed to operate.
Through this process we have managed to conduct a systematic study of our world, 
breaking it into many separate fields; physics, mathematics, astronomy, and biology, just to name a few. We have deduced the general structure and functions of atomic and subatomic particles (then went on to blow up several hundred thousand people with that knowledge), theorized about various aspects of electricity, computers and electronics and then promptly proceeded to glue cell phones to our ears and computer monitors to our eyeballs. In the last century or so, we even managed to roughly figure out DNA’s existence and function and begun mixing up our own Frankenstein animals and plants to suit our fancy- it’s anyone’s guess to how that might turn out.
We value these kernels of knowledge that we have managed to glean from chopping the world up into little bits and separating the resulting pieces into piles. We like to name these little piles that we’ve made out of the world; in chemistry we have the periodic table of elements that encompasses the scope of our existence in neat little letters: C, N, O, H and so on.
In biology, we categorize the pieces of living matter into useful labels as well… Of course, scientists can’t just use common terms like dog, cat, cow- So, in order assure that everyone knows we are committing particularly scientific acts, the scientists must classify all these creatures. In Biology this accounts for the fact that we call all the other plants and critters that inhabit ‘our’ world by scientific names: Canis familiaris, Felis cattus, Bos taurus…
We like to simplify the issues- to reduce the problem into black and white. This kind of scientific dialecticism certainly makes it easier to attack and issue. To break it down into constituent parts makes it easier for us to categorize the parts and their functions. Also, true to our Puritan heritage, this practice makes it easier for us to figure out what is ‘good’ and ‘bad’.
This particular form of “good or bad” thinking has gained popularity in the western mind- especially in the United States- where we have gone gaga over the latest scientific fads resulting from reductionist thinking. The general public tends to blindly trust the knowledge handed to us from the (loudest) mouths of the scientific establishment. We see this trend particularly well in the constant waves of “nutritionist” food fads that follow pronouncements from our esteemed nutritional scientists (who can never seem to agree about anything). Pronouncements declaring new nutritional enemies and allies can make or break the sales of a food in the supermarket- and lead to interesting consequences along the American waistline.
We increasingly are encountering issues with this reductionist technique- of separating the parts from the whole: the belief that we can somehow reduce a system to the sum of its parts- ignoring the complexity and interconnectedness of said system. Much of the study of nutritionist science is based on this separationist thinking. Studies will be done on particular foods within populations and (more often than they’d like to admit) those conducting the studies will attribute the positive or negative results not to the entire context of the food (the population’s activity level, when they eat, what else they eat in combination with the food, how it was processed and stored, etc), but to only one of it’s constituent parts- say, Vitamin A or a particular anti-oxidant that is currently all the rage. (For more information read Michael Pollan’s excellent book: In Defense of Food).
If truth be told, these reductionist techniques yield very mixed results- and even the things that we thought that we 100% we sure of are constantly being called into question. One year (or decade) we are assured unequivocally that fat is the enemy, then all of the sudden Carbs take the stage as the nutritional villain- And surprise! Fats, which we were supposed to avoid at all costs aren’t really that bad- they don’t contribute to cancer at all and their link to heart disease is tenuous at best. In fact, some of them are absolutely essential for important little things like silky hair, good skin and oh yeah, brain development and mental health. And remember those other supposedly ‘healthy’ scientifically man-made trans fats (in margarine and other processed ‘food-like’ substances) that they urged us to replace the traditional dietary fats with – those actually do cause cancer. Oops.
Of course, this all works out for the food processing companies, as they just follow along with the latest food science fad. Fats are bad? No worries- we’ll just take it out and add more carbs. Is vitamin E the Hero of the day? No problem- we’ll just fortify it!!! Zinc? Folic Acid? Antioxidants? We’ve got it covered! But do we ever stop to think that maybe we don’t have it all covered? That by reducing our foods down to their constituent nutrients and injecting them into processed products willy-nilly that we might be missing out on something essential? That perhaps the constituent parts created by Mother Nature tare not as interchangeable as gears in a machine?
The problem that rears it’s ugly head is that many of the essential nutrients that we have identified (and there are many more that we have no idea of yet) do not function all by their lonesome in a vacuum. Instead they are part and parcel of a system of interacting, interlocking parts.
We humans evolved as part of that system as well- a context of foods, activities, of life and death and evolution – an entire complex ecosystem designed by Mother Nature. By breaking our foods apart, purifying individual nutients and injecting them into a neat scientific pill form or fortifying our breakfast cereals, we are loosing the synergy of that system- the very substances that are a boon when taken in context of a whole food can become a poison to our systems when taken separately. Beta carotene- believed to be a helpful cancer preventative when ingested in the form of a whole food such as a carrot, has been shown to actually promote certain kinds of cancer when taken as a supplement in pill form. Divorced from its context the nutrient becomes something other than what it was as part of its system.
We see the dark side of reductionist science in other areas as well. In the decades following the 1980’s, the general public became aware of the plight of endangered species. What we should have been worried about was endangered ecosystems. After several decades with much hurry and flurry, it has become increasingly clear that the environmental movement’s focus on saving one species within a particular ecosystem has proved ungainly, costly and largely ineffectual.
We have discovered that the endangered animals are not separate “units” that can be “saved” outside of the ecosystem that they inhabit, but rather part and parcel of that entire system- and can no more be “saved” outside of that system than a sno-cone can be ‘saved’ outside of a refrigerator on a hot summer day- it is the very 
environs, the other plants, animals and even the abiotic elements (minerals, water) that are tied together in one living, dynamic system. We ignore this element of change, of the very complex aliveness of these natural systems (of which we are all a part) at our peril.
Reduced to a simple recipe of parts, we are again and again surprised when these parts do not add up to make a whole. Something is always missing, but we don’t yet have the knowledge to know what it is. Reductionist thinking is a useful tool with which to examine our world- but falling into the trap of thinking that it will provide us with all the answers is pure folly. The complex systems that have evolved in nature over time, cannot (at least right now) be broken down into separate parts and dissected without loosing the synergy that results from their interaction.
Sometimes Mother does know best.
