Methodology: Methodological holism is required here. The inability of women to open jars is not explained by any individual woman’s grip strength or any individual jar manufacturer’s torque specification. It is a structural property of the capitalist packaging system, in which engineers optimized for shelf-life and shipping integrity, generating a civilization-wide distributed imposition (T1-4 Against Rent-Seeking and Capture, T3A-6 Against Systematic Engineering of Exploitable Vulnerability) on everyone whose hands are smaller than the industrial design assumption. No single lid is the villain. The lid is innocent. The system sealed your salsa.
Counter-argument for methodological individualism: actually, you could just hit the lid with a butter knife.
Level of analysis: individual. Problem resolved.
Falsification criterion: if hitting the lid doesn’t work, holism was right all along.
Methodology: Methodological holism is required here. The inability of women to open jars is not explained by any individual woman’s grip strength or any individual jar manufacturer’s torque specification. It is a structural property of the capitalist packaging system, in which engineers optimized for shelf-life and shipping integrity, generating a civilization-wide distributed imposition (T1-4 Against Rent-Seeking and Capture, T3A-6 Against Systematic Engineering of Exploitable Vulnerability) on everyone whose hands are smaller than the industrial design assumption. No single lid is the villain. The lid is innocent. The system sealed your salsa.
Counter-argument for methodological individualism: actually, you could just hit the lid with a butter knife.
Level of analysis: individual. Problem resolved.
Falsification criterion: if hitting the lid doesn’t work, holism was right all along.