What Are We to Make of Reasoning in Modern Medicine?

Abstract

The suasive power of clinicians depends on the projection of certainty; with that suasive power, responsibilities to the patient have not diminished even if the clinicians’ authority has. Certainty is reflected in understanding, which is more than knowledge. Understanding allows reasoning beyond the specifics of knowledge, beyond the particulars. The variation in human manifestations represents either variation or diversity. In variation, all specific instances are variations on some canonical form. Diversity holds each instance as an entity unto itself. The epistemic choice of variety as variation or diversity determines medical reasoning. Biomedical research is confronted with the same challenges. The resort is to a special form of logic and epistemology that is organic, responding to needs, and synthetic, the product of humans. This evolutionary logic embraces a necessary use of logical fallacies. Science requires these fallacies, and thus scientism is limited and cannot replace medical reasoning.