Description
This book critically assesses the implications of modern medicine's claim to be a natural science. Medicine models its scientific and clinical self-understanding on an obsolete positivist conception of science, reality, and consciousness. In this view, the body is modeled as a biological machine, disease as breakdown of the machine, and therapy as physical measures to fix the machine. The problems besetting medical science and practice are rooted in the inadequacy of the positivist philosophical assumptions regarding the nature of science, reality and consciousness To base the diagnostic practices and therapeutic regimes purely on knowledge of physical processes in the human body is, in view of this analysis, at best grossly inadequate, at worst thoroughly dehumanizing (Anton van Niekerk: Editorial Foreword). This means that medicine's clinical method cannot be transformed without transforming the underlying view of science, of reality, and of the human person. The book proposes a broader model of science which overcomes the outdated dichotomy between human and natural sciences. Science is viewed as an interdisciplinary exercise generating multiple perspectives. The insights of the human sciences are essential for scientific clinical medicine. Utilizing evolutionary biology and complexity theory, the author proposes an alternative understanding of reality and human consciousness as a basis for a transformed clinical method. Reality is a hierarchy of systems of increasing complexity. Different levels can be distinguished, namely material systems, living material systems, conscious living material systems and self-conscious living material systems. Each level represents a new manner of being which requires a different scientific discourse of understanding. Using this model of reality the author argues against understanding human consciousness as a byproduct of physical processes in the brain. The human person is a self-conscious, complex, psycho-somatic system, whose well-being is conditioned by much more than physical processes.
About the Author
Jacques Kriel studied philosophy and psychology at the University of Stellenbosch in the Republic of South Africa. After teaching philosophy for two years at the University of Fort Hare, he began medical studies at the medical school of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He specialized in internal medicine. In 1973, he was admitted as a Fellow of the College of Medicine of SA, and, in 1974, he obtained the degree Master of Medicine from the University of the Free State. In 1996, he was awarded the degree MA in Philosophy from the Rand Afrikaans University (RAU) in Johannesburg. After occupying senior health administration posts in what is now the North West Province of the Republic of South Africa, he occupied the following positions: founding Rector of the University of the North West (1979-1982); Claude Harris Leon Professor of Medical Education and Director of the Centre for the Study of Medical Education at the University of the Witwatersrand (1983 to 1989); Academic Principal of Sacred Heart College in Johannesburg (1990 to 1992). From 1993 to 1997, he was consultant physician in the department of internal medicine of the Medical University of Southern Africa, and (for two years) Dean of the Faculty of Medicine. Since 1998, he is Principal Physician and Head of the Department of Internal Medicine at Tambo Memorial Hospital, a 500-bed regional hospital east of Johannesburg. The hospital is named after the late Oliver Tambo, long-time president of the African National Congress (ANC). Jacques Kriel has published in South African and international journals, and in collective volumes, on philosophy, theology, politics, education, and medicine. He co-authored a book with Willem Saayman of the Faculty of Theology of The University of South Africa, entitled AIDS: The Leprosy of Our Time? Towards a Christian Response to Aids in Southern and Central Africa. He has published two monographs, the first on medical education, entitled Removing Medicine's Cartesian Mask: The Problem of Humanising Medical Education. The second, on the philosophy of medicine, is called Viagra and the Mind-Body Problem: Philosophical Implications of a Pharmaceutical Innovation.
Reviews
"I enjoyed this book, and found the argument stimulating. It does offer a basis for understanding medical research and practice in ways which are likely to be particularly relevant to general practitioners and other primary health care professionals." - Christopher Dowrick, Professor of Primary Medical Care, University of Liverpool, UK, in: The European Journal of General Practice, Vol. 6, No. 4, December 2000
Book Information
ISBN 9789042007994
Author Jacques Kriel
Format Paperback
Page Count 157
Imprint Editions Rodopi B.V.
Publisher Brill
Weight(grams) 344g
About the Author
Jacques Kriel studied philosophy and psychology at the University of Stellenbosch in the Republic of South Africa. After teaching philosophy for two years at the University of Fort Hare, he began medical studies at the medical school of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He specialized in internal medicine. In 1973, he was admitted as a Fellow of the College of Medicine of SA, and, in 1974, he obtained the degree Master of Medicine from the University of the Free State. In 1996, he was awarded the degree MA in Philosophy from the Rand Afrikaans University (RAU) in Johannesburg. After occupying senior health administration posts in what is now the North West Province of the Republic of South Africa, he occupied the following positions: founding Rector of the University of the North West (1979-1982); Claude Harris Leon Professor of Medical Education and Director of the Centre for the Study of Medical Education at the University of the Witwatersrand (1983 to 1989); Academic Principal of Sacred Heart College in Johannesburg (1990 to 1992). From 1993 to 1997, he was consultant physician in the department of internal medicine of the Medical University of Southern Africa, and (for two years) Dean of the Faculty of Medicine. Since 1998, he is Principal Physician and Head of the Department of Internal Medicine at Tambo Memorial Hospital, a 500-bed regional hospital east of Johannesburg. The hospital is named after the late Oliver Tambo, long-time president of the African National Congress (ANC). Jacques Kriel has published in South African and international journals, and in collective volumes, on philosophy, theology, politics, education, and medicine. He co-authored a book with Willem Saayman of the Faculty of Theology of The University of South Africa, entitled AIDS: The Leprosy of Our Time? Towards a Christian Response to Aids in Southern and Central Africa. He has published two monographs, the first on medical education, entitled Removing Medicine's Cartesian Mask: The Problem of Humanising Medical Education. The second, on the philosophy of medicine, is called Viagra and the Mind-Body Problem: Philosophical Implications of a Pharmaceutical Innovation.
Reviews
"I enjoyed this book, and found the argument stimulating. It does offer a basis for understanding medical research and practice in ways which are likely to be particularly relevant to general practitioners and other primary health care professionals." - Christopher Dowrick, Professor of Primary Medical Care, University of Liverpool, UK, in: The European Journal of General Practice, Vol. 6, No. 4, December 2000
Book Information
ISBN 9789042007994
Author Jacques Kriel
Format Paperback
Page Count 157
Imprint Editions Rodopi B.V.
Publisher Brill
Weight(grams) 344g
