Perhaps there have been at least as many attempts to answer philosophical questions by means of an approach belonging to one or another special science as there have been attempts by philosophy to defend her right to an authentically philosophical approach. Questions about the nature of man and his world, culture, are especially at stake. However, the matter of reductionism does not just play a role in the relation between the special sciences and philosophy: within the special sciences themselves too there has been much resistance to the urge for expansion of certain approaches to the detriment of others (this holds outside science too: one can think of the resistance the anti-globalization movement offers to "neo-liberalism").