[By way of a synthesis of its conceptual evolution towards scientific medicine].
A historic outline of the evolution of medical thought toward scientific medicine is presented. Galen from Pergamon, one of science's first philosophers, wrote an Institutio logica, which can be considered as an introduction to the scientific method. Later, the Nominalists of the XIV century, precursors of modern science, thought that science's object was not the general, vague and indeterminate, but the particular, which is real and can be known directly. About the middle of the XVII Century the bases of the modern science became established thanks to a revolution formented essentially by Galileo, Bacon and Descartes. During the XVIII Century, parallel to the development of the great current of English Empiricism, a movement of scientific renewal also arose in continental Europe following the discipline of the Dutch Physicians and of Boerhaave. In the last century, Claude Bernard dominated scientific medicine, but his rigorous determinism impeded him from taking into account the immense and unforeseeable field of the random. Nowadays, we approach natural science and medicine from particular groups of facts, that is, from the responses of Nature to specific questions, but not from general laws. Furthermore, in recent epistemology, the concept that experimental data are not pure facts, but rather, facts interpreted within a hermeneutical context has been established. Finally, a general tendency to retrieve philosophical questions concerning the understanding of essence and existence can frequently be seen in scientific inquiry. In the light of the evolution of medical thought, it is possible to establish the position of scientific medicine within the movement of ideas dominating in our time.
de Micheli-Serra
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Instituto Nacional de Cardiología Dr. Ignacio Chavez, Departamento de Farmacología, México, D. F.
D049669:History, 16th Century; D049670:History, 17th Century; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049690:History, Ancient; D049691:History, Medieval; D006801:Humans; D010686:Philosophy, Medical / Q000266:history*; D012586:Science / Q000266:history*; D013850:Thinking