La jibarización del logos: cómo el reduccionismo médico puede matar

Abstract

In recent decades, a disciplinary and subdisciplinary proliferation has triggered both in the medical fields and science in general. This trend may be partially explained by two diachronic, dialectically interconnected facts: the deepening of technical, social and international division of labor in the globalized capitalist world, and the triumph of the reductionist program, mainly developed by the logical empiricism of the Vienna Circle. This paper aims to deepen the debate on the intricate links between medicine, biology, philosophy, reductionism and complex thought, by using two examples: a case report of current medicine and the situation experienced by a famous American scientist, Stephen Jay Gould, about his first cancer, an abdominal mesothelioma. We have witnessed how the two above-mentioned historical facts have been operating as a super-structure like a pair of "tweezers", dismembering and compressing at the same moment the object of knowledge, the theories that allow their study, and the subject that receives the knowledge. This jibarization of logos is a real problem for public health, from the moment that it impacts, omnipresent, in the actual hegemonic medical model, leading to potentially dangerous attitudes to the various components of health systems.

Reductionism in medicine

“…We have read carefully the work of the Biologist Juan Emilio Sala published in the Boletín Médico del Hospital Infantil de México 1 . We agree with the author that complex thinking and holistic vision are superior to the pure reductionist look.…”

El reduccionismo en medicina

“…Hemos leído con atención el trabajo del biólogo Juan Emilio Sala publicado en el Boletín Médico del Hospital Infantil de México 1 . Concordamos con el autor en que el pensamiento complejo y la mirada holística son superadoras de la mirada reduccionista pura.…”