Cambridge Journals Online

Of skyhooks and the coevolution of scientific disciplines

Abstract

The history of the natural sciences repeatedly shows that the unification of a higher level theory with a lower level theory by reduction does not eliminate the need for the higher level theory nor preclude its further development, leading to changes in the understanding of the lower level. The radical neuron doctrine proposes that the future science of psychology or linguistics will derive principally from the evolution of understanding at the neural level and not from current theories based on the observation of behavior. It is far more likely that the two bodies of theory will coevolve in semiautonomous fashion.