Levi-Strauss’s structuralism holds that science explains by reducing apparent reality to hidden underlying structure.

Evidence

Miriam Glucksmann is correct when she suggests that this is principally in a methodological sense. 32 What all three had in common with Lé vi-Strauss’s structuralism was that “all three showed that understanding consists in the reduction of one type of reality to another; that true reality is never the most objective of realities, and that its nature is already apparent in the care which it takes to evade our detection.” 33 As Marx once said of the vulgar economists, “it is only the immediate phenomenal form of these relations that is expressed in their brains and not their inner connection . Incidentally, if the latter were the case, what need would there be of science ?” 34 The reduction of “immediate observables” to the level of structure therefore constituted for Lé vi-Strauss the heart of a scientific method. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 358

Categorization

• SEED: This methodological credo shared by geology, psychoanalysis, and Marxism could seed an essay on the ‘hidden depth’ assumption across modern disciplines.
• XREF: The ‘reduce observables to hidden structure’ doctrine echoes the Frankfurt School’s critique of ideology-reading surface appearances versus inner social logic.