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The Relevance of Philosophy of Medicine for the Philosophy of Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Caroline Whitbeck
Caroline Whitbeck*
Affiliation:
SUNY/Albany
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Extract

How could philosophy of medicine have any particular relevance for the philosophy of science, one might wonder. Either medical science is like other sciences or it is not. If it is like them, if (or to the extent that) it is not unique in the features it possesses, then attention to it is unnecessary. If (or to the extent that) it is unique in the features it possesses, then it is irrelevant to an account of science in general. Surely what is wrong with this way of putting the matter is that the differences between the medical and other sciences are matters of degree rather than kind.

Medical science is distinctive as a theoretical science in prominantly displaying certain features which, while possessed to some degree by all sciences, were much easier to overlook when we took physics, or even just classical mechanics, as our prime example of science.

Type
Part II. What Does Philosophy of Medicine Have to Do with Philosophy of Science?
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1976 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1976 , 1976 , pp. 123 - 135
Copyright
Copyright © 1977 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

I am indebted to David Hull, Gerene Major, Steven Davis and participants in fall 1976 northeastern meeting of the Society for Women in Philosophy for criticisms of earlier drafts of this paper.

References

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