In many areas, there is a 'brute force' approach. It's often pretty unpopular. Doesn't mean it's wrong, though... [genetics/statistics/AI/economics/politics-ethics/philosophy/science] :: [bigger GWASes/Monte Carlo/more GPUs/capitalism/economic growth/atomism/reductionism].
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A kind of 'worse is better', perhaps? Some very generalized reluctance to embrace any paradigm requiring a *lot* of simple units to give rise to complex entities, an insistence that complex things be made of complex things.
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In intellectual history, it's easy to name many cases where people were sure something was made of relatively few ontologically-basic complex entities but which turned out to be made of simpler more numerous entities; but can you name any examples of the *reverse* mistake?
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Replying to @gwern
Basically the whole history of biology? From “animals are made of meat, which is made out of tiny meat bits” to more and more complex structures being found at all scales. When I took high school biology in 70s, the era when cells were just bags of molecules had barely passed.
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Replying to @Meaningness
What? When was biology *ever* 'simple tiny meat bits all the way down'? Certainly not Aristotle, or preformationism, or anything.
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Fair; that was an exaggeration. But there’s been frequent addition of large complex entities that were previously unsuspected. (But those aren’t ontologically basic, per your spec. What are examples of complex ontologically basic objects?)
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