The Empirical and the Theoretical in Medical Science: A Philosophical Analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.48010/ety2ac14Keywords:
Medicine, Human Being, Empirical, Theoretical, Philosophy of Medicine, Disease, HealthAbstract
Medicine is a very specific science, in which its practical orientation is closely linked to the construction of theories about diseases and ways to cure them. Therefore, the empirical and theoretical in the content of medicine are closely related, sometimes to the point of interpenetration. Empirical – observation, description, experience, measurements, experiment act as the initial stage of the development of medical science, theoretical – concepts, analysis, synthesis, assumption, hypothesis, idea, modeling, theory – as the next. But such a division is conditional, and it would be wrong to imagine that medical knowledge moves linearly from the empirical to the theoretical level. In medical science, there is a mutual substantiation of empirical and theoretical by each other, as well as their internal mutual enrichment by one another, which forms the so-called dialectic of empirical and theoretical. The subject of medicine is man, and medicine has come closer to understanding man as a developing, transcendent being. Therefore, the acquisition by medicine of a holistic vision of human disease and health, and ultimately a holistic vision of man, is an urgent task of modern medicine. Understanding the organic unity of empirical and theoretical in medicine is a step along this path. The fragmentation of medicine into hundreds and thousands of diseases occurs not least because of the division of unified medical knowledge into empiricism and theory. Combining them contributes to the essential unity of medicine.
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