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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'

man/machine and medicine « Previous | |Next »
January 2, 2006

A quote from the dictionary of the history of ideas to establish the ground:

The term “man-machine” denotes the idea that the total psychic life of the individual can be properly described and explained as the product of his physical organization viewed as a mechanical system in structure and function

I've always understood the category of “machine,” as an equivalent of the living organism, as closely conforming
to its first thoroughly consistent exposition by La Mettrie in 1747 as developed by materialism based on the natural sciences that favoring naturalistic and physicalistic theories and explanations.

This presuppose a reductionism in which higher-level processes can generally be better understood by looking at their constituent lower-level processes., as understood by physics and chemistry. It rejects all forms of dualism, especially those who maintain that non-physical minds violate the laws of physics and chemistry in their interactions with bodies.

The strong conception of man/machine, which holds that animals and humans are 'nothing but' chemical or physical machines, stands in opposition to those who argue that in living organisms life cannot be explained solely by mechanism. The accounts of this 'cannot be explained' have varied, a key classical account centres around the scientific attempts to do away with teleology or goal directedness of organisms; ie., the idea of something's being directed towards an end.

In medicine this strong conception of man/machine in which the human is understood in terms of biochemical reactions . This model focuses on the physical processes, such as the pathology, the biochemistry and the physiology of a disease. This model is effective at diagnosing and treating most diseases, and it has been successful in establishing the reasons that a disease occurs, and in coming up with very effective treatment regimes.

It is limiting model as it reduces all illness to disease. We can explain illnesses without disease if we take into account the role of a person's mind or society in the cause and treatment of illhealth. By not taking into account society in general, the prevention of disease is omitted by the biomedical model. Many illnesses affecting such as heart disease, diabetes and obesity are very much dependent on a person's actions and beliefs, whilst environmental pollution in society causes many cancers. The latter is part of the social medicine model , which holds that diseases are due to the social conditions in which they develop.

This model believes that the origin of the great diseases in the 18th and 19th centuries was the social environment of developing capitalism. The social medicine model argues that that rather than examine the individual's body in search for bacteriological explanations of disease or search for new drugs in the laboratory, this model identifies the social environment as the source of sickness and ill health.

The strong conception of man/machine in medicine also stands in opposition to those whose account of why life in living organisms cannot be explained solely by mechanism.is along vitalist lines. Though has Western medicine has long abandoned vitalism with its embrace of the biomedical model, vitalism lives on in alterenative or complimentary medicine. This holds that the vital body is made up of a network of energy channels. Illness occurs due to disturbances, blockages, or congestion in this web of vital energy. Healing methods are directed at the restoring the flow vital energy.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:59 PM | | Comments (0)
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