Two Models of Medical Knowledge
Abstract
When a physician talks about disease or impaired capacity, he usually means some imperfection in biological and/or psychological functioning of the human being. As a medical student, he was taught some basic knowledge concerning human biology, anatomy, physiology, and pathology. Theoretically he should easily be able to tell the difference between the perfect and the imperfect, the normal and the pathological, the healthy and the sick. A pediatrician sees at once the difference between the healthy and the severely handicapped newborn. A GP can easily diagnose herpes or trivial flu, and has no difficulty in assessing the level of deficiency in our sight or hearing. Of course there are some difficult cases where it is impossible to make even a tentative diagnosis, and when despite all technological support, the physician is unable to find any convincing explanation of the patient’s condition [Cassell, 19781. These are, however, incidental and rare cases and indeed very few doctors will straightforwardly declare their ignorance. By and large medicine, as a powerful branch of modern science, shares its epistemological optimism: even if at present it cannot explain nor treat some illnesses, it is only a question of time before it will be able to.
Keywords
Medical Knowledge Human Person Biological Organism Biomedical Model Complex Biological SystemPreview
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