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32Jacob Stegenga: Medical nihilism: Oxford University Press, 2018, 256 pp, $39.95 , ISBN: 978-0-19-874704-8Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 40 (1): 75-81. 2019.
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31Constructing a scientific paper: Howell's prothrombin laboratory notebook and paperInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 15 (3). 2001.Scientists generally record their laboratory activities and experimental results in notebooks, from which they construct scientific papers. The Johns Hopkins physiologist William Henry Howell kept a laboratory notebook from 1913 to 1914, in which he recorded experiments on the blood clotting factor prothrombin. In 1914 he published a paper using this notebook, to justify his theory of prothrombin activation. Howell's paper is reconstructed, in terms of its narrative and argument elements, from t…Read more
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30Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Philosophy of Medicine (edited book)Bloomsbury. 2016.A definitive and authoritative guide to a vibrant and growing discipline in current philosophy, The Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Philosophy of Medicine presents an overview of the issues facing contemporary philosophy of medicine, the research methods required to understand them and a trajectory for the discipline's future. Written by world leaders in the discipline, this companion addresses the ontological, epistemic, and methodological challenges facing philosophers of medicine today, …Read more
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30Fredrik Svenaeus: Phenomenological bioethics: medical technologies, human suffering, and the meaning of being alive: Routledge, New York, 2018, xiv + 161 pp, $42.95 , ISBN: 978-1-138-62996-7Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 39 (2): 165-169. 2018.
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30Experimental Series and the Justification of Temin’s DNA Provirus HypothesisSynthese 154 (2): 259-292. 2007.A notion of experimental series is developed, in which experiments or experimental sets are connected through experimental suggestions arising from previous experimental outcomes. To that end, the justification of Howard Temin's DNA provirus hypothesis is examined. The hypothesis originated with evidence from two exploratory experimental sets on an oncogenic virus and was substantiated by including evidence from three additional experimental sets. Collectively these sets comprise an experimental…Read more
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29The role of prudent love in the practice of clinical medicineJournal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 17 (5): 877-882. 2011.
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28The End of Modern Medicine: Biomedical Science Under a Microscope (review)Journal of Medical Humanities 26 (2-3): 191-193. 2005.
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28‘Soup’ vs. ‘Sparks’: Alexander Forbes and the Synaptic Transmission ControversyAnnals of Science 63 (2): 139-156. 2006.During the twentieth century, a controversy raged over the role of electrical forces and chemical substances in synaptic transmission. Although the story of the ‘main’ participants is well documented, the story of ‘lesser’ known participants is seldom told. For example, Alexander Forbes, who was a prominent member of the axonologists, played an active role in the controversy and yet is seldom mentioned in standard accounts of the controversy. During the 1930s, Forbes incorporated chemical substa…Read more
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27Evolutionary Philosophy of Science: A New Image of Science and Stance towards General Philosophy of SciencePhilosophies 2 (4): 25. 2017.An important question facing contemporary philosophy of science is whether the natural sciences in terms of their historical records exhibit distinguishing developmental patterns or structures. At least two philosophical stances are possible in answering this question. The first pertains to the plurality of the individual sciences. From this stance, the various sciences are analyzed individually and compared with one another in order to derive potential commonalities, if any, among them. The sec…Read more
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26Great Feuds in Science: Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever. Hal HellmanIsis 92 (1): 143-144. 2001.
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26What’s the Support for Kuhn’s Incommensurability Thesis? A Response to Mizrahi and PattonSocial Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 2015. 2015.Moti Mizrahi (2015) examines whether there are “good arguments” to support Kuhn’s taxonomic incommensurability (TI) thesis. He concludes that there is neither “valid deductive” nor “strong inductive” support for the thesis and that consequently TI should not be believed or accepted. In response, Lydia Patton (2015) claims that the most “influential” arguments within the history of science are abductive or inference to the best explanation (IBE) rather than deductive or inductive arguments. After…Read more
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24William Henry Howell and Jay McLean: the experimental context for the discovery of heparinPerspectives in Biology and Medicine 33 (2): 214. 1990.
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23Kuhn, Thomas SInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2015.Thomas S. Kuhn Thomas Samuel Kuhn, although trained as a physicist at Harvard University, became an historian and philosopher of science through the support of Harvard’s president, James Conant. In 1962, Kuhn’s renowned The Structure of Scientific Revolutions helped to inaugurate a revolution—the 1960s historiographic revolution—by providing a new image of science. For … Continue reading Kuhn, Thomas S. →.
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22From Evidence-Based Corona Medicine to Organismic Systems Corona MedicinePhilosophy of Medicine 4 (1). 2023.The Covid-19 pandemic has challenged both medicine and governments as they have strived to confront the pandemic and its consequences. One major challenge is that evidence-based medicine has struggled to provide timely and necessary evidence to guide medical practice and public policy formulation. We propose an extension of evidence-based corona medicine to an organismic systems corona medicine as a multilevel conceptual framework to develop a robust concept-oriented medical system. The proposed…Read more
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20Mary Ann G. Cutter: Thinking through breast cancer: a philosophical exploration of diagnosis, treatment, and survivalTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 41 (2): 119-125. 2020.
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19Philosophy of Science: The Historical Background. Joseph J. KockelmansIsis 91 (4): 838-838. 2000.
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19Self-Generation: Biology, Philosophy, and Literature around 1800. Helmut Mueller-SieversIsis 89 (1): 136-137. 1998.
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18It is now—at least loosely—acknowledged that most health and clinical outcomes are influenced by different interacting causes. Surprisingly, medical research studies are nearly universally designed to study—usually in a binary way—the effect of a single cause. Recent experiences during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic brought to the forefront that most of our challenges in medicine and healthcare deal with systemic, that is, interdependent and interconnected problems. Understanding these pr…Read more
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18The discovery of heparin revisited: the peptone connectionPerspectives in Biology and Medicine 39 (4): 610-625. 1995.
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16From Heresy to Dogma in Accounts of Opposition to Howard Temin's DNA Provirus HypothesisHistory and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 24 (2). 2002.In 1964 the Wisconsin virologist Howard Temin proposed the DNA provirus hypothesis to explain the mechanism by which a cancer-producing virus containing only RNA infects and transforms cells. His hypothesis reversed the flow of genetic information, as ordained by the central dogma of molecular biology. Although there was initial opposition to his hypothesis it was widely accepted, after the discovery of reverse transcriptase in 1970. Most accounts of Temin's hypothesis after the discovery portra…Read more
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16Professing clinical medicine in an evolving health care networkTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 40 (3): 197-215. 2019.For at least the past several decades, medicine has been embroiled in a crisis concerning the nature of its professionalism. The fundamental questions that drive this ongoing crisis are primarily three. First, what is the nature of medical professionalism? Second, who are medical professionals? Third, what does medicine or these professionals profess or promise? In this paper, the professionalism crisis vis-à-vis these questions is examined and analyzed chiefly in terms of both Francis Peabody’s…Read more
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12Mary Ann G. Cutter: Thinking through breast cancer: a philosophical exploration of diagnosis, treatment, and survival: Oxford University Press, 2018, xxiv + 223 pp, $34.95 (cloth), ISBN: 978-0-19-063703-3 (review)Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 41 (2-3): 119-125. 2020.
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10Philosophy of Science: The Historical Background by Joseph J. Kockelmans (review)Isis 91 838-838. 2000.
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10Self-Generation: Biology, Philosophy, and Literature around 1800 by Helmut Mueller-Sievers (review)Isis 89 136-137. 1998.
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9Experimentation and theory choice: is thrombin an enzyme?Perspectives on Science 4 (4): 434-462. 1996.Approaches to the analysis of theory choice in science studies often focus either on objective criteria or subjective values for evaluating theories or on critical experiments for testing theories. In the present article a historical case study in the biomedical sciences is reconstructed, in which experimentation was performed to choose between two competing theories of blood coagulation. Analysis of this case study reveals that experimentation exhibits a particular structure, composed of design…Read more
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9Metaphysical Foundations and Complementarity of Science and TheologyJournal of Interdisciplinary Studies 17 (1-2): 45-64. 2005.This essay examines the metaphysical foundations of the natural sciences and Christian theology in order to complement the epistemic claims from both disciplines. These foundations include Robin Collingwood's notion of presuppositions and Ernan McMullin's epistemic and non-epistemic values. Specifically, the essay investigates the presuppositions and values of science and theology used for guiding and constraining the formation and evaluation of scientific theories and theological doctrines. Pra…Read more
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8Great Feuds in Science: Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever by Hal Hellman (review)Isis 92 143-144. 2001.
Areas of Interest
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