Whole Person Medicine: A Cooperative Inquiry
We have created cultures of alienation through the linear scope we choose to observe people through
“For holistic medicine we are looking for a science capable of studying persons as wholes. One of the difficulties of talking about this kind of science is that in our culture both science and inquiry have been captured - they are almost synonymous with - an orthodox world view.
This view is based on a Cartesian split between mind and body, and on mechanical and bio-chemical models of the world and of the body. So when we think about research, we tend immediately to think about dependent and independent vari-ables, about measurements and statistical reliability, about experimental and control groups and so on.
We immediately think in ways that are analytic and reductionist rather than holistic; we think about the parts and how they impact on each other, rather than the primacy of the whole”
In the words of the late John Heron, master Futurist, who had the foresight to recognise the urgency of systems change in the NHS in the early 80’s -
“we need Research ‘with’ people, not on people”
His work in the NHS was 4 decades before it’s time, 4 decades before & still no one is ready to listen.
Now we sit with a failed health system having gigantic implications that are ricocheting across Britain.
Heron goes on to say:
“in human enquiry it is much better to be deeply interesting than accurately boring” referring to orthodox science
His work is very timely for today’s issues:
https://lnkd.in/dc2z3uRb
MS5|Research Enthusiast(open to research opportunities)|Literature Writer| Poet|
6moInterested