I feel like there's a conflict between the epistemology of science and the sociology of science that trips up both scientists and philosophers of science.<p>"Reductivists" believe that there is some end state where there isn't a difference: we know enough to have a rational way to proceed to discover the rest. Which may or may not be true, but either way, it's certain that we're not there yet.<p>That creates a conflict of language. Reductivists speak as though they're on the path to that, and often omit that they're not there yet. When the various anti-reducitivsts point that out, it feels like they're just repeating what we already know.<p>It's worth studying how scientists actually proceed, and the remarkable flip they do at the end where they re-frame their work in terms of how it would fit into the overall edifice of knowledge at the end of the reductivist program. They cover up the process in the belief that it's irrelevant. At best, it's too much to wade through: it's hard enough keeping up with discoveries as it is, without the full story of the various dead ends and random guesses they made along the way.<p>That's a human problem. We're trying to do something with inefficient human mental machinery enclosed in multiple units that communicate poorly.<p>You can call the current process "ideology", in that they're trying to do something on incomplete information, so they proceed with what has worked best so far in their subjective experience. But it feels like carping to do so. It seems unnecessarily negative. They'd jump to the end of the process if they could, but they simply can't, and coming from philosophers on the sidelines rather than the people doing the work I can't tell who it's trying to aid.