 A shared feature of many alternatives to reductionism is an emphasis on pluralist dimensions of epistemology in biology that situate methodological or explanatory reduction as one among many necessary components (Dupré 1993, Kellert et al. 2006, Longino 2000, 2002, 2013, Mitchell 2003). In different ways, these positions stress how the scientific investigation of biological phenomena demands diverse epistemic tools without a requirement to tie it all together into fundamental physics, macromolecular chemistry, or even  molecular biology.  Thus, ontological reduction becomes more or less unhinged from epistemological reduction because there is no need to demonstrate how each and every domain of scientific inquiry is anchored in physical stuff. Scientists are epistemologically profligate, even if they are largely metaphysically frugal (see Dupré 1993 and van Fraassen 2002 for differing perspectives on science and metaphysics). The plurality of biological research motivates a philosophical  pluralism  about biology, both in terms of the many meanings available for different methodological and epistemological types of reduction, and the need to have multiple dimensions of reductionism in order to secure empirical adequacy with respect to modeling biological phenomena (Grantham 1999, Kellert et al. 2006, Looren de Jong 2006, Morange 2006, Sullivan 2009, van der Steen 1999, Wylie 1999).