... complementary relationship and the relevance of biological knowledge for understanding of psychological phenomena will be explored in this essay. Reductionism, postulated by the biologist Francis Crick (Toates, 2002), proposes that 'any particular event or phenomenon can be understood simply by looking at the basic elements or parts which make it up'(Hayes, 2000, p. 16). For example, psychological processes can be explained as caused by actions of genes, hormones or any other low-level entities. There exists, however, an opposing view that this kind of analysis is not sufficient to fully explore the true nature of all psychological matters. This is where the principle of emergent property comes into use (Toates, 2002). This principle refers to a characteristic of a system that derives from the interaction of its parts and is not apparent or inherent in the parts considered in isolation. A traffic jam is an example of such a system where a ...

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