irreducible
5
7.7
- adjective
- /ˌɪrəˈdjuːsəbl/
:
irreducible
- The artist captured an irreducible essence of nature in her stunning sculpture.
- irreducible representation
- irreducible element
- irreducible mystery
It's part of how we grapple with the irreducible mystery.
- It's part of how we grapple with the irreducible mystery.
- And then still you are left with an is it an irreducible essence that remains?
- If they're modalities, then they're irreducible.
- And what that means is that macros, macro level entities can have real irreducible causal power in the world.
- They were both materialistic philosophies in that they they don't think that there is any sort of irreducible soul that's not material.
- So the important thing is that every science has its own irreducible concepts in which you get the best explanation.
- So the idea that the the can't carry on talking about you, Alex's mind is a sort of fundamental, irreducible thing.
- You're your smallest, most irreducible, undividable you.
- They seem to have the feature that they are, that they're sort of showing irreducible computation.
- And I really do feel that the universe gains a completely unique one of one irreducible perspective of itself through our being.
- It is timeless, it is irreducible, it is fundamental, it is formless, and it is infinite and it is you.
Examples
-
Gendered personhood is—to borrow the term from Maurice Merleau-Ponty—an irreducible intertwining of the actual and the immaterial.
Academic text (2012) -
I could have cried for the simple, sweet, irreducible beauty of it.
Fiction book (2000) -
If every single living thing is different from every other living thing, then diversity becomes life's one irreducible fact.
-
In the heat of such a crisis, however, their reactions and responses would retain an irreducible element of unpredictability.
Academic text (1992) -
Perhaps such extraordinary episodes of school violence represent an irreducible level of psychopathology that afflicts youngsters as well as adults.
Academic text (1998) -
The irreducible complexity of the universe challenges our understanding of existence.
-
In mathematics, some equations are irreducible, meaning they cannot be simplified any further.
Synonyms
Not able to be made simpler or broken into smaller parts
Does not divide into simpler parts
Antonyms
How Reducible
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
Irreducible comes from the prefix ir- meaning 'not' plus the common verb reduce meaning 'make smaller', so a thing that is irreducible cannot be made smaller or simpler.