Combining art and science in healthcare.

Abstract

This Issue of LJPC contains two papers that provide new insight into the old puzzle of how to combine Art and Science in health and health care. Through a discussion of music and metaphor, Hallam and Whitehouse show that Art and Science provide complementary insights into how to live a healthy life. Art is good at forward-looking co-creative activities. Science is good at the more retrospective task of working out what actually worked – for example whether an antibiotic defeated a bacterium in an experiment. Both are needed. A healthy person moves their life story forwards in a healthy way by creatively interacting within a complex world. Toon explains this well – health is an aliveness of spirit that enables someone to develop a flourishing life story.[1] In a similar vein, Antonovski has argued that being healthy means rising above adversity.[2] Health is an active thing that helps someone to live in the moment and turn bad things into good. Of course disease can get in the way of health, but the absence of disease does NOT make someone healthy. Indeed, the onset of disease often has the effect of waking someone up to the need to start living their life in a healthier way. Health care needs to help people to be healthy as well as cure their illnesses. Hallam’s paper has already caught readers’ attention, achieving 240 downloads merely in the time it has been sitting on the LJPC website waiting for publication. It shows a range of health benefits to people aged over 50 when they take part in musical activities. But look at what those benefits are: