Ég var búinn að gleyma umfjöllum Dawkins um smættun í The Blind Watchmaker.
The hierarchical reductionist […] explains a complex entity at any particular level in the hierarchy of organization, in terms of entities only one level down the hierarchy; entities which, themselves, are likely to be complex enough to need further reducing to their own component parts; and so on.
Ég myndi þýða þetta sem lagskipta smættun. Hann heldur áfram:
This was the point of explaining cars in terms of carburettors rather than quarks. But the hierarchical reductionist believes that carburettors are explained in terms of smaller units . . ., which are explained in terms of smaller units . . . , which are ultimately explained in terms of the smallest of fundamental particles. Reductionism, in this sense, is just another name for an honest desire to understand how things work.
Mér finnst þetta vel orðað en vissulega er betra að lesa þetta í heild sinni í samhengi.