Science and the Social Order. By Bernard Barber. (London, Allen & Unwin, 1953. Price. 20s.)

Abstract

NEW BOOKS abroad, 1 upon an almost unbroken tradition of moral philosophy which has paid close attention to the psychology of moral action and the validity of accepted moral standards. We have of course suffered severely from "estrangement" and other distinctive ills of modern civilization. But what is, for the present, alarming is that the public has hardly any sense of the limitations of scientific knowledge. The need is, not for a new philosophy, but for thinkers who are not afraid to maintain that the philosophy of the past is still relevant to modern problems. The word existentialia (pp. 106, 175) appears to me to be in no known language, but perhaps it is Heideggerian. On p. 154, "past" is a mistake for "passed". On p. 182, the word autochthone, in the quotation from Goethe, seems to be mistranslated. On p. 103, the remark "Heidegger renews the question by which Aristotle has dislodged the old metaphysics, the question concerning the meaning of being", seems confused: for, in the first place, it was Plato's Eleatic Stranger who asked this question, and secondly, it might be more correct to say that metaphysics began when it was asked. D. J. ALLAN.

Mapping the Sociology of Health and Medicine

“…These were therefore important decades, and not least because, along with the general expansion of the social sciences, sociology began to find institutional homes beyond the LSE and London (Halsey 2004:98 (Goldberg 1958), as well as the relationship between social class and mental health; George Brown, a social anthropologist at the Maudsley Institute of Psychiatry, who undertook studies in psychiatric medicine, the social basis of mental illness, and eventually the relationship between class and depression (Brown 1959;Brown and Harris 1978); Ann Cartwright, a statistician who later founded the Institute for Social Studies in Medical Care (in 1970); Fred Martin, a social psychologist from the LSE who lectured in the Department of Social Medicine from 1956; Joe Loudon, a social anthropologist at Maudsley; Derek Allcorn, a social anthropologist from the Social Medicine Unit at the Central Middlesex Hospital; and Barbara Wootton (1959) from Bedford College, who studied the impact of psychiatric ways of thinking on attitudes towards mental health and illness, and the relations between social pathology and class, family characteristics, and physical health.…”

Third parties: victims and the criminal justice system

“…On the one hand, the schools of criminology that have predominated over the past two centuries 28 have emphasized the utilitarian functions of the criminal law, even to the extent of the virtual elimination of concepts of guilt and responsibility (Wootton, 1959;Gramatica, 1963), or of imposing responsibility for unintended harm, sometimes even in the absence of negligence (strict liability). Only recently has the retributive philosophy reemerged (see chap.…”

Sociological issues in the conceptualization of mental illness

“…The conceptual problem appears to stem from the task of trying to place physical and mental illnesses on the same medical (positivist) footing, m order to reduce the controversial nature of the distance between the two (Sedgwick 1972) This has led to the task of trying to purge all cultural norms (with their variability from society to soaety) from the concept of mental illness (Wootton 1959) To do tbs, though, requires a microscopic and molecular analysis of the 'objective' nature of human behaviour This is not only highly problematic but has so far been unsuccessful and is, therefore, an idealistic notion and not one that has current practical usage According to Sedgwick (1972) this is only one way of creating such congruity By working in the reverse direction (relativism rather than positivism), the character of both physical illness and mental illness can be revealed as 'soaal constructions' Below the level of mankind all hfe forms m nature exist outside the constructs of illness, disease and, therefore, treatment, until man intervenes with his uiuque definitions based upon his own interests and concerns For example, our interest in the animal world IS based ufK)n food and/or other social economic uses, witnessed by the general lack of concern over the diseases that affect squirrels or foxes Once physical illness is grounded as 'culturally relative' (le ascnbed by individuals or by others according to the dominant theory of the culture regarding causes of illness -invasion by germs or evil spints) the variability of what counts as 'mental illness' does not render the term as problematic as cntics of traditional psychiatry hold As a value-laden concept, 'all sickness is essentially deviancy', according to Sedgwick (1972) whereby no attnbution of sickness to any being can be made without the expectation of some alternative state of dtairs whidi is considered more desirable Thus, m the absence of a normative alternative, the definition of illness has no meaning Intrinsic to this view is the point that there are no 'illnesses or diseases in nature' outside of the sigmficantx that man attaches to them The medical enterprise (both physical and mental) is, therefore, seen as being value-loaded, it is not simply an appbed biology, but a biology applied in accordance with the dictates of soaal interest (Sedgwick 1972) Busfield (1986) agrees with the analysis made by Sedgwick, regarding the role of values m concepts of health and illness, but argues that although many theonsts make a case for widespread concern about the operation of values throughout mediane, there are especial grounds for concern in the mental health held…”