Abstract
Scientific knowledge is a symbolic system consisting of hypotheses, models and theories generated by means of a paradigm-mediated interaction between a scientific community and a research domain. Such a knowledge generating paradigm consists of already existing theories, as well as methodological and ontological beliefs or assumptions. In this article it is argued that the meaning ascribed to the central concepts of medical science(such as patient, disease, causality and therapy) are fundamentally determined by the 19th century logical positivist scientific paradigm. The ontological and methodological implications of the postmodern natural sciences (e.g. quantum physics) have not been applied to medical science. The 19th century ‘natural science paradigm’ therefore acts as a metatheory for both medical science and medical practice. However, the theoretical knowledge system generated by medical science acts as the theory for the practice of scientific clinical medicine which therefore functions with the same understanding of the central concepts such as patient, disease and disease causality, therapy etc. The limitations of this paradigmatic monism are illustrated by an analysis of the medical and societal response to the AIDS epidemic and it is concluded that medical science and practice, because of the complexity o f its research and practice domain, must accept in principle the possibility of paradigmatic pluralism (as in the social sciences) or should attempt to develop a holistic paradigm that will cope more adequately with its fields of research and practice.Copyright information
- Ownership of copyright in terms of the Work remains with the authors.
- The authors retain the non-exclusive right to do anything they wish with the Work, provided attribution is given to the place and detail of original publication, as set out in the official citation of the Work published in the journal. The retained right specifically includes the right to post the Work on the authors’ or their institutions’ websites or institutional repositories.
Publication and user license
- The authors grant the title owner and the publisher an irrevocable license and first right and perpetual subsequent right to (a) publish, reproduce, distribute, display and store the Work in any form/medium, (b) to translate the Work into other languages, create adaptations, summaries or extracts of the Work or other derivative works based on the Work and exercise all of the rights set forth in (a) above in such translations, adaptations, summaries, extracts and derivative works, (c) to license others to do any or all of the above, and (d) to register the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for the Definitive Work.
- The authors acknowledge and accept the user licence under which the Work will be published as set out in https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (Creative Commons Attribution License South Africa)
- The undersigned warrant that they have the authority to license these publication rights and that no portion of the copyright to the Work has been assigned or licensed previously to any other party.
Disclaimer: The publisher, editors and title owner accept no responsibility for any statement made or opinion expressed by any other person in this Work. Consequently, they will not be liable for any loss or damage sustained by any reader as a result of his or her action upon any statement or opinion in this Work.
In cases where a manuscript is NOT accepted for publication by the editorial board, the portions of this agreement regarding the publishing licensing shall be null and void and the authors will be free to submit this manuscript to any other publication for first publication.
Our copyright policies are author-friendly and protect the rights of our authors and publishing partners.