main purpose of science is to trace, within the chaos and flux of phenomena, a consistent structure with order and meaning. This is called the philosophy of rationalism, rational as in conforming with reason. And the purpose of scientific understanding is to coordinate our experiences and bring them into a logical system... Why? Primarily, the control of the unpredictable driven by the fear of the unknown.
Reductionism and determinism deny the possibility of free will and human agency and this negates rationalism and science itself.
Reductionism:
Reductionism is the belief that any complex set of phenomena can be defined or explained in terms of a relatively few simple or primitive ones.
For example, atomism is a form of reductionism in that it holds that everything in the Universe can be broken down into a few simple entities (elementary particles) and laws and interactions among them. Modern chemistry reduces chemical properties to ninety or so basic elements (kinds of atoms) and their rules of combination.
To a reductionist, once a set of equations or mathematical relations has been found to describe a system, then the behavior of the system is considered to be explained.
Reductionism is very similar to, and has its roots from, Occam's Razor, which states that between competing ideas, the simplest theory that fits the facts of a problem is the one that should be selected.
Reductionism was widely accepted due to its power in prediction and formulation. It is, at least, a good approximation of the macroscopic world (although it is completely wrong for the microscope world, see quantum physics).
Too much success is a dangerous thing since the reductionist philosophy led to a wider paradigm, the methodology of scientism, the view that everything can and should be reduced to the properties of matter (materialism) such that emotion, aesthetics and religious experience can be reduced to biological instinct, chemical imbalances in the brain, etc. The 20th century reaction against reductionism is relativism. Modern science is somewhere in between.
Determinism:
Closely associated with reductionism is determinism, the philosophy that everything has a cause, and that a particular cause leads to a unique effect. Another way of stating this is that for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given them, nothing else could happen.
Implicit to determinism is the fact that every event happens of necessity. It has to happen; the Universe has no choice.
Determinism also implies that everything is predictable given enough information. Since Newtonian or classical physics is rigidly determinist, both in the predictions of its equations and its foundations, then there is no room for chance, surprise and creativity. Everything is as it has to be, which gave rise to the concept of a clockwork Universe.
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