Dupré advocates a pluralistic model of science as opposed to the common notion of reductionism. Physical Reductionism suggests that all science may be reduced to physical explanations due to causal or mereological links that obtain between the objects studied in the higher sciences the objects studied by physics. For example, a physical reductionist would see psychological facts as (in principle) reducible to neurological facts, which is in turn are reducible to biological facts. Biology could then be explained in terms of chemistry, and chemistry could then be explained in terms of physical explanation. While reductionism of this sort is a common position among scientists and philosophers, Dupré suggests that such reduction is not possible as the world has an inherently pluralistic structure.

A classical argument for reductionism relies on a particular conception of causality, according to which each event must have a sufficient physical cause. Physical interactions are therefore sufficient to account for all causal interactions. Under this assumption, psychological or biological facts must be eliminable in favour of physical facts, given that the physical conditions do all the causal work. This makes all the other, non-physical conditions causally superfluous.
Dupré tries to escape this problem by rejecting determinism, and the assumption that there is a physical cause for each and every event. In place of Determinism, Dupré proposes a conception of indeterministic, probabilistic causality. His ideas are influenced by Nancy Cartwright. The philosopher Karl Popper represents a similar position.

John Dupré (born 1952) is a professional philosopher of science. He is the director of the ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society and professor of philosophy at the University of Exeter.[1] Dupré was educated at the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge and taught at Oxford, Stanford University and Birkbeck College of the University of London before moving to Exeter. Dupré's chief work area lies in philosophy of biology, philosophy of the social sciences, and general philosophy of science. Dupré, together with Nancy Cartwright, Ian Hacking and Patrick Suppes and Peter Galison, are often grouped together as the "Stanford School" of philosophy of science.