Dr Harper should be congratulated for his attempt to entice physicians to philosophical values (January 2003 JRSM1). His article touches on several aspects of philosophy that can be viewed on a par with medicine. Philosophy (from the Greek for love of wisdom/knowledge) was the unifying theme in classical education. It encouraged the quest for why and how things come to be and provided a mechanism for reasoning that could be applied to any academic discipline. In modern times, when medicine is threatened by information-overload, the philosophical process (inquiry, critical reasoning, analysis) can offer valuable insights for practice. However, as Dr Harper indicates, acceptance demands an end to the misconception that philosophy is incompatible with practical science.
The general view is that, while science has answers that command widespread agreement, philosophy is interested in matters on which there is less consensus. By challenging concepts and assumptions, the philosophical approach can generate new perspectives in science. Advances in genomic biotechnology, for instance, illustrate the difficulty of deciding what to do with scientific discoveries. We need to consider what society we wish to have and our relationships with each other and our surroundings, which depend on our conception of ourselves as human beings at societal level.
This is where, in our opinion, Dr Harper's article is overambitious in scope. In trying to cover a large area, he omits certain issues that are important in explicating/exploring the common ground between philosophy and medicine; for example, how should ethics be applied in the medical arena, or how does morality ethically connect with human society? His choice of philosophers was necessarily limited, but in an article about science as applied to medicine we would have included the following: Thales of Miletus, the first natural scientist and analytical philosopher in Western intellectual history; Aristotle, for his observation, methodological classification and empirical analysis; Bertrand Russell, for his logical analysis;2 and Michel Foucault, for his insightful analysis of scientific knowledge and social control.3
References
- 1.Harper CM. Philosophy for physicians. J R Soc Med 2003;96: 40-5 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 2.Russell B. Human Knowledge. Its Scope and Limits. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1943
- 3.Foucault M. The Birth of the Clinic: an Archaeology of Medical Perception. London: Tavistock, 1973