Abstract
At the age of three or four a child begins to ask the question, “Why?” In so far as we can think our way into the mind of a child, we might say that he is trying to understand the world around him and meets with puzzles that he cannot resolve. He is seeking an explanation. This word derives from the Latin planus, which means “flat” or “smooth.” Explanation renders smooth that which formerly had been rough or uneven. Before a person seeks an explanation he must be aware of something rough or uneven, something troublesome in the flow of experience. The explanation, when accepted, removes that rough spot and renders the flow of experience once more smooth.
This study was supported by a grant from the Public Health Service Research Grant LM 01804-01.
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Notes
Friedrich Hoffmann, Fundamenta Medicinae [1695], trans. by Lester S. King (London: Macdonald, and New York: American Elsevier, 1971 ).
Joseph Glanvill, Saducismus Triumphatus, or Full and Plain Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions [1689] (Gainesville, Florida: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1966), p.
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© 1975 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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King, L.S. (1975). Some Basic Explanations of Disease: An Historian’s Viewpoint. In: Engelhardt, H.T., Spicker, S.F. (eds) Evaluation and Explanation in the Biomedical Sciences. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1769-5_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1769-5_2
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