A very simple example of a reductionist-type experiment (that anyone who did science will have learned early in secondary school) is Boyle’s Law (which was taught to us with great enthusiasm because firstly it is a very important experiment and also because Robert Boyle was Irish).
He did his experiment by pouring mercury into a glass tube enclosed at the one end and then measured the reduction in volume of air as the pressure from the extra weight of mercury increased. He showed the relationship between pressure and volume when the amount of gas (air – in Boyle’s case) and its temperature didn’t change. (That is, were held constant). This relatively simple law is applied in thousands of different environments, and the results of its application, to all intents and purposes, are the same.
In terms of cause and effect, it is very obvious. The effect (the reduction in volume) can be clearly linked to the cause (the pressure exerted on the air by the weight of mercury). The design of thousands of applications depends on the proven-ness of the validity of the original hypothesis.
Now, thinking about the calculation of precise measurements in the area of human distress, it is far more difficult to predict how, for example:
Psychological pressure from a traumatic event affects the behaviour of a human being in society.
Than it is to predict how:
Physical pressure from weight of mercury affects the behaviour of air in a glass tube.
The difficulty that we helpers of very hurt people face in design, (i.e. planning strategies to alleviate distress) is that in the application of our science, cause and effect are not at all as clear.
We are fooled into thinking, however, that the opposite is the case, because cause and effect works reasonably well for the vast majority of the population. (This will be expanded considerably in Chapter Three of this Section, Universal Theory of Change).
But just to get us thinking I will give an example of reductionism in the area of helping people, where the people being helped are children aged between approx. 4 and 18.
Mainstream education is an area in which both cause and effect and reductionism in respect of human beings are both manifest. The desired effect (a human reaching mature adulthood gaining sufficient knowledge in diverse areas to allow him to compete for employment so he can make a living) is caused by many years of social, mental and physical, and indeed spiritual development starting from 1+1 = 2, and finishing with advanced mathematics, or, starting from spelling simple words and writing the cat sat on the mat and ending with knowledge of a wide array of poetry, philosophy, grammar, languages etc.
The way that this is done is that, over the lifetime of the education, (like Boyle’s famous experiment described above) the number of variables (things that can and will change) is reduced to a minimum.
Examples of what are held as constant as possible are 1): the curriculum, 2): the class size, 3): the exams given, 4): the marking of those exams, 5): the classroom, 6): the methods of teaching, 7): the training teachers receive, and 8): the length of the school year.
With all these factors relatively constant, mainstream education actually strives to scientifically predict the quality of the result of years of education as a measurable quantity. (The marks attained by different students in the same unknown exam that is given to everyone at the same time).
This is an example of using the reductionist method to determine future behaviour.
Of course a school is not a laboratory as such, but to illustrate the relevance of the reductionist method to the arguments that I put forward in this website I will propose that mainstream education is analogous to a controlled experiment in a laboratory, (school) with a human as the subject, replicated many times so that the human’s future behaviour can be (somewhat) predicted.
The reason that we keep doing it is that over many generations and in many cultures, with minor alterations, it has worked reasonably well!
So is it any surprise that very intelligent, well educated, and experienced planners in education, health and justice adopt a similar paradigm to supporting people in the Focus Group who are in deep distress?