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between Maxwell theory and electrical engineering, a situation so very different
from the actual conditions.
4.4
Conclusions
Medicine, as viewed from a hard scientist perspective, assumes substantially the
shape and features of a
monster
, and this in both the senses that this word carries
from ancient times: medicine is at the same time
portentuous
, due to its continuous
generation of questions that are always interesting, often crucial and in most of the
instances too complex to master or difficult to formalize to produce a satisfactory
answer in the general case - something which is bound to happen when we mix
human nature and a pretense of exactness; and
abnormal
in its strict but necessary
refusal to conform to the rules and established good practices of all sciences that
aspire to a perfect end eternal repeatability under severe scrutiny. This change in
perspective is never too late to come - as soon as what differentiates the scientist
from the experimental subject is no more the capacity of introspection in actions,
any standard application of rules guided by numerical precision becomes at best
wishful thinking and in the worst cases too close to playing god for anyone's com-
fort. In order to navigate through the perilous sea of medical practice, our guide
cannot be just a list of coordinates to attain and of close ports to call our owns: we
must refer to a well balanced mix of empirical knowledge, a huge and well culti-
vated baggage of tacit knowledge that can only be build with experience and the
practice of what we have already referred to as
art of medicine
, an aesthetic sense
of morality. This does not exclude traditional methodologies culled from hard sci-
ences: measuring is still of paramount importance, and most of the pieces that have
been already solved in this great jigsaw of a science have already been dissected,
examined and understood through methods and common practices that belongs to
engineering, biology, physics, chemistry and the likes. But it is certain that focusing
just on this side of the equation is not enough to develop medicine satisfactory as a
science. Sadegh-Zadeh's handbook is clearly not just a very important contribution
for filling this gap, but - by showing many of the possibilities offered for a different
approach to a number of crucial questions - is also a fundamental tool for looking at
what we need for reducing the gap.
References
1. Cardaci, M., Di Gesú, V., Petrou, M., Tabacchi, M.E.: On the Evaluation of Images Com-
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2005. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3849, pp. 305-311. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)
2. De Mauro, T.: La Cultura degli Italiani. Laterza, Bari (2010)
3. Sadegh-Zadeh, K.: Handbook of Analytic Philosophy of Medicine. Springer, Amsterdam
(2012)
4. Seising, R.: On the Absence of Strict Boundaries — Vagueness, Haziness, and Fuzziness
in Philosophy, Science, and Medicine. Applied Soft Computing 8, 1232-1242 (2008)
