A Journey Through Philosophy and Medicine: From Aristotle to Evidence-Based Decisions

The evolution of medical reasoning is deeply intertwined with philosophical thought, beginning with Aristotle’s foundational work in deductive logic. Aristotle’s principles significantly influenced early medical practice, shaping the works of Galen and Avicenna, who made empirical observations that...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Philosophies (Basel) 2024-12, Vol.9 (6), p.189
Main Authors: de Alencar, José Nunes, Oliveira, Marcio Henrique de Jesus, Sampaio, Maria Catarina Nunes, Rego, Maria Francisca, Nunes, Rui
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Decision making
Dengue fever
Disease
empirical investigation
Ethics
Evidence-based medicine
Forecasts and trends
Hippocrates (460?-377? BC)
Hume, David
Knowledge
logical empiricism
Medicine
Middle Ages
Patients
Philosophers
philosophical thought
Philosophy
Popper, Karl
Practice
Principles
scientific evolution
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The evolution of medical reasoning is deeply intertwined with philosophical thought, beginning with Aristotle’s foundational work in deductive logic. Aristotle’s principles significantly influenced early medical practice, shaping the works of Galen and Avicenna, who made empirical observations that expanded clinical knowledge. During the Enlightenment, both inductive reasoning, as advocated by Francis Bacon, and deductive methods, as stressed by René Descartes, significantly advanced medical reasoning. These approaches proved insufficient when it came to handling uncertainty and variability in medical outcomes. Nineteenth-century figures like William Osler advanced a probabilistic understanding of medicine. Karl Popper’s 20th-century hypothetico-deductive method, which introduced the concept of falsifiability and transformed scientific inquiry into a rigorous process of hypothesis testing, is a fundamental aspect of evidence-based medicine (EBM). EBM emerged as the dominant paradigm, combining empirical research, clinical expertise, and statistical inference to guide medical decisions. Looking forward, Bayesian reasoning offers a further refinement in medical reasoning. By incorporating prior knowledge and continuously updating probabilities with new evidence, Bayesianism addresses the limitations of frequentist methods and offers a more dynamic and adaptable framework for clinical decision making. As medical reasoning evolves, understanding this philosophical lineage is essential to navigating the future of patient care, where evidence must be both rigorously tested and individually tailored.
ISSN:2409-9287
2409-9287
DOI:10.3390/philosophies9060189