글의 제목으로 가장 적절한 것은? If you're faced with a complicated problem, it is very tempting to chop it up into a lot of simple problems, and then knock them off one by one. It is sometimes claimed that if you have solved all the simple problems you've solved the whole thing. That's reductionism in a nutshell. And as a methodology it works extremely well. In my discipline, which is physics, it's had some amazing successes. Look at the world about us, just see how complicated it is, the richness and diversity of nature. How are we ever to come to understand it? Well, a good way to start is by breaking it up into small bite-sized pieces. One example is atomism. The belief that the entire universe is made up of atoms, or some sort of fundamental particles, and that everything that happens in nature is just the rearrangement of these particles, has proved extraordinarily fruitful. Once you focus down to the level of individual atoms you can work out all the laws and principles that govern them. You can figure out in detail what they are doing. It's then tempting to believe that if you understand individual atoms and the way they interact, you understand everything.