90 Chapter 2 reasoning and, preferably, quantitative data to support theories that cannot be further reduced to alternative causal relationships. Analysis requires a cool mind. Objectivity is the norm in the search for certain knowledge via substantiating theories. Subjectivity, feeling, intuition and spontaneous, less considered actions or deeds sometimes are considered to pose a direct threat to analysis. Through as many objectified standards as possible, reality can be controlled and directed. In this realistic approach, the urge to control and the ideal of social engineering are lurking, and an early protest against it was formulated by the French sociologist Bourdieu (1977). In medical science, diseases are eliminated to as great an extent as possible; in cultural science, the focus is on problem-free coexistence; and in education, progress can be measured on the basis of standardised results. Governments and supervisory bodies monitor what is happening and make adjustments where necessary. Martens et al. (2020) described this tendency, especially since the early 1970s, as the belief in the manufacturability of reality and the resulting need for control. This kind of exercising of control over systems and situations, which is based on clear and cool-minded analysis, follows a reductionistic pattern. Hossenfelder (2020) presented reductionism as the hypothesis that the properties of the constituents of a system determine how that system works. As a consequence, the system can be controlled through a clear understanding of its constituent parts. Hossenfelder (2020) did not hesitate to claim that the reductionistic hypothesis has always proven to be true. She perceived the entire history of science as its success story. In the field of education, reductionism shows itself in the high level of attention paid to measurable outcomes and the mechanistic view of schools and the curriculum. Standaert (2014) criticised the fondness for standardised testing, the early selection of students and the tendency to rank schools by results. Schools are focused on the added value they provide to students, and they define this value predominantly in cognitive terms. Much broader personhood formation sometimes lacks attention due to being less measurable. Hard analytic data are perceived as more tacit and important than soft approaches that are associated with respect and mystery, or even a combination of the two. Relatively little room is left for emergence: the idea that what spontaneously comes into being through classroom interaction should be seized with pedagogical tact. The problem with reductionism is that paying stringent attention to the constituents can easily lead to the failure to perceive the whole of the (eco)system of the organism. Stafford and Combs (1967) and Wrigley (2019)
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