Fuzzy Sets and Medicine Historical and Epistemological Remarks

Abstract

The field of medicine is notably different from other sciences since the great complexity of living organisms makes it nearly impossible to make definite statements and observations, i.e. to have certain knowledge. Fuzzy Sets and Systems have been proposed as a appropriate tool to deal with this unsharp medical knowledge since the late 1960's. In the first part of tis paper we give a historical sketch of the development of this "fuzzy thinking" in the field of medicine. In the second part of this paper we regard this "fuzzy thinking" in medicine from a philosophical point of view. We consider the fuzziness of medical knowledge as the fuzziness of scientific knowledge at all.