Medicine,
Mind and Adolescence 1997, XII, 1-2
THE RELATIVITY OF BIOLOGICAL REACTIONS AND THE FIRST FORMULATION OF AN INTERACTIONIST EPISTEMOLOGICAL PARADIGM FOR MEDICAL SCIENCE AND ITS APPLICATIONS IN CLINICAL RESEARCH AND MEDICAL EDUCATION
Giuseppe R. Brera
Giuseppe R. Brera
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Abstract
Studies on the interactions between the central nervous, immunitary and endocrinological systems, the mind and behaviour, permit a theory of medical science to be formulated . The variability of immunitary reactions to the experimental possibility offered to animals to escape - or otherwise - conditions of stress determined the obsolescence of Selye’s concept of stress and permitted the formulation of a theory on "the determinate relativity of animal coping" while, for the indeterminate human world, a theory on "the indeterminate relativity of human coping" was developed, where biological variables were related to psycho-sociological, anthropological and existential ones. The results of such studies made it possible to introduce a new theoretical paradigm of research and practice to medical epistemology, refounding it on new key words such as "biological reactions", "possibility of coping" and "quality of coping", and overcoming such concepts of the philosophy of science as " biological laws" only definable a posteriori by the greater or lesser variability of biological reactions.
Biological reactions in nonhumans appear to be subject to a foreseeable determinism that is explained by a theory of "general determinate relativity", while human biological reactions appear to be subject to a theory of "general indeterminate relativity".
These new theories seem to suggest that research, clinics and medical education should be addressed toward an interactionist, qualitative epistemology, thereby reformulating the concept of health.
Key Words: interactionism, medical epistemology, theory
of medical science, human coping.
1. Correspondence to: Giuseppe R. Brera, Rector of Ambrosiana University, President of SIAd, V.le Romagna 51, 20133 Milano (Italy). E-mail: gbrera@unambro.it.
