# reductionism

> English word · Noun · frequency rank #84,668

## Definitions
1. An approach to studying complex systems or ideas by reducing them to a set of simpler components.
2. A philosophical position which holds that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can be reduced to accounts of individual constituents. In a reductionist framework, the phenomena that can be explained completely in terms of relations between other more fundamental phenomena are called "epiphenomena".

## Etymology
From reduction + -ism.

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/word/reductionism