Ayala, Francisco J. “Thermodynamics, information, and evolution: The problem of reductionism.” (1989): 115-120.
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Few issues have been so actively debated by philosophers of science, and by scientists engaged in philosophical matters, as the relationship bet-ween the biological and the physical sciences or between organisms and inorganic matter. The controversy is often referred to as ‘the problem of reductionism’, but several issues are at stake that are not always adequately distinguished by those engaged in controversy. Issues about the relationship between the biological and the physical sciences fall into at least three domains, which may be called ‘ontological’, ‘methodological’, and epistemological'. In the ontological (or structural’, or ‘constitutive’) domain, the issue is whether or not physicochemical entities and processes underlie all living phenomena. Are organisms constituted of the same components as those making up inorganic matter? Or do organisms consist of other entities besides atoms and molecules? This is the old question of mechanism versus vitalism, which already engaged Aristotle, was extensively discussed by Thomas Aquinas and the scholastics as well as by the Cartesians, and became the subject of active debate once again since the late nineteenth century with the rise of modern biology.