Fragmentalism is a term used to describe metaphysical positions such as philosophical realism, which hold that the world consists of individual and independent objects. The term fragmentalism is frequently used in a pejorative sense to describe reductionism, which is an argument that the world is indeed composed of separable parts, and that it is knowable through the study of these components.

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  • Fragmentalism is a term used to describe metaphysical positions such as philosophical realism, which hold that the world consists of individual and independent objects. The term fragmentalism is frequently used in a pejorative sense to describe reductionism, which is an argument that the world is indeed composed of separable parts, and that it is knowable through the study of these components. Fragmentalism has also been defined as the notion that knowledge is a growing collection of substantiated facts or "nuggets of truth." Anti-realists use the term fragmentalism in arguments that the world does not exist of separable entities, instead consisting of wholes. For example, advocates of this position declare that: The linear deterministic approach to nature and technology promoted a fragmented perception of reality, and a loss of the ability to foresee, to adequately evaluate, in all their complexity, global crises in ecology, civilization and education. This term is usually applied to reductionist modes of thought, frequently with the related pejorative term of scientism. This usage is popular amongst some ecological activists: There is a need now to move away from scientism and the ideology of cause-and-effect determinism toward a radical empiricism, such as William James proposed, as an epistemology of science. These perspectives are not new and in the early twentieth century, William James noted that rationalist science emphasized what he termed fragmentation and disconnection. An alternative usage of this term is in cognitive psychology. Here, George Kelly developed "constructive alternativism" as a form of personal construct psychology, this provided an alternative to what he saw as "accumulative fragmentalism". In this theory, knowledge is seen as the construction of successful mental models of the exterior world, rather than the accumulation of independent "nuggets of truth". (en)
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  • Fragmentalism is a term used to describe metaphysical positions such as philosophical realism, which hold that the world consists of individual and independent objects. The term fragmentalism is frequently used in a pejorative sense to describe reductionism, which is an argument that the world is indeed composed of separable parts, and that it is knowable through the study of these components. (en)
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  • Fragmentalism (en)
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