Counting the industries Steve Jobs profoundly changed — computing, cell phones, moviemaking, publishing, music production and distribution, even retail — falls far short of acknowledging his true impact, since his work touched nearly everyone in the nation. The original Macintosh was released in 1984 with the tagline, “The computer for the rest of us.” Jobs’ passing gives a moment for reflection, not about him but about the rest of us.

As commentators struggle to describe the ways Steve Jobs “changed the world,” influential yet little-acknowledged corners of society struggle against the idea of one person changing the world, or for that matter, changing anything at all. There wages beneath the surface today a war on individualism, both whether it’s a good idea and whether it’s actually even possible.

The philosophical reductionism that dominates the sciences today insists on diminishing the impact of individuals. In biology, of course, the individual person is of no account at all, except as a binary agent — yes or no, true or false — based on a single question: Did you reproduce and thus pass along your genes? Neuroscientists and philosophers of mind grapple over fundamental questions of the nature of consciousness and volition — in other words, free will. Does “free will” even exist? An astonishing number of experts would deny it.

Cornell professor and historian of science Will Provine emphatically rejects the idea of human free will:

“Free will as it is traditionally conceived — the freedom to make un-coerced choices among alternative courses of action — simply does not exist.”

Provine is not nearly alone; many leading academics make the same or similar claims. Rather than having genuine autonomous choices, variations of the argument go, humans are fundamentally “descended from robots and composed of robots,” as philosopher Daniel Dennett described us in his book Kinds of Minds. What we think is free will is actually just the result of a swamp of genetics, social conditioning and brain states.

Renowned philosopher Bertrand Russell arrived early to the idea, which he described in 1929:

“The first dogma which I came to disbelieve was that of free will. It seemed to me that all notions of matter were determined by the laws of dynamics and could not therefore be influenced by human wills.”

One wonders, given the content of the claim, how Russell managed to use the phrase “it seemed to me.” Just who is this “me” to whom he was referring? After all, the “persistence of identity” — the “i-ness” of I — is something else that reductionists struggle to explain. Since every cell in our body is replaced at regular intervals, for example, how do I remember childhood? Strictly speaking, I wasn’t around back then.

Of course, there’s much more to these issues than this column can cover. And at any rate, the challenge to the individual hardly ends at philosophical reductionism. Most of sociology and much of today’s tired politics reduce people to predefined categories. You are male or female. You are some ethnicity. You are young or old or in between. You are rich or poor or middle class. You are labor or management. You are Republican or Democrat or independent. You are nothing more than the sum of your labels.

“...the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

Steve Jobs

As groups and governments matter more, individuals matter less. For the experts who see us as robots, pronouncement becomes policy. You are only as valuable as your group.

Enter Steve Jobs, stage left.

When Jobs introduced the Macintosh, he had the signatures of the original members of the Mac development team molded into the inside case of the computer. This was a dead cost; customers would never see it. But he wanted to celebrate the contributions of the key individuals that contributed to the birth of the Mac.

Over the next two decades, the Mac was celebrated as the computer of the freethinker — particularly those in artistic pursuits. For some fields — such as photography, video and music production — the Mac’s market-share at times approached nearly unanimous levels.

The famous “i” products — iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad — were all crafted around the idea of the individuals shaping the device with media and applications to enjoy exactly as they see fit. Every person’s iPhone is unique.

In 1997, Jobs launched the famous “Think Different” campaign, which revived the brand and presaged the next decade-plus of different thinking:

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

Famously private, Jobs gave some rare public glimpses into his own life and outlook during his Stanford University commencement address in 2005. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life,” he told the graduates. “And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

For many reasons, Steve Jobs will be missed. He steadfastly lived his own advice, choosing his own path, and much of the world has reaped the benefits. His story was extraordinary — but not unique. After all, his was a human story.

If a visionary is someone who has deep insights about the future, Steve Jobs was a special kind of visionary: He was able to see into the future and decide it just isn’t good enough. Much of what followed proceeded out of the force of one man’s free will. He decided it wasn’t good enough.

Out of the precincts of academia, philosophical reductionism minimizes the human mind and denies free will — dismissing us all as the hapless victims of genetics or social forces or parenting or brain states. And after the verdict is read, it is refreshing to see a life like Steve Jobs’ tell philosophical reductionism to go to hell.