This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.

Described by the philosopher A.J. Ayer as a work of 'great originality and power', this book revolutionized contemporary thinking on science and knowledge. Ideas such as the now legendary doctrine of 'falsificationism' electrified the scientific community, influencing even working scientists, as well as post-war philosophy. This astonishing work ranks alongside The Open Society and Its Enemies as one of Popper's most enduring books and contains insights and arguments that demand to be read to this day.

This is the first book that analyzes and systematizes all the general ideas of medicine, in particular the philosophical ones, which are usually tacit. Instead of focusing on one or two points — typically disease and clinical trial — this book examines all the salient aspects of biomedical research and practice: the nature of disease; the logic of diagnosis; the discovery and design of drugs; the design of lab and clinical trials; the crafting of therapies and design of protocols; the moral duties and rights of physicians and patients; the distinctive features of scientific medicine and of medical quackery; the unique combination of basic and translational research; the place of physicians and nurses in society; the task of medical sociology; and the need for universal medical coverage. Health care workers, medicine buffs, and philosophers will find this thought-provoking book highly useful in their line of work and research.

Clinicians and patients know the importance of correct diagnosis for proper treatment. So important – a correct diagnosis – it is the first theme of this book. Several other themes are also important. A second theme is established as “cause and effect,” common or peculiar linked entities in at least some humans. A third theme deals with probabilities, both objective and statistical and/or subjective probabilities. The fourth theme covers the inhomogeneity among all humans. That is, all people are unique. Is science a theme? Not of this kind. Instead, science encompasses all of the themes above and others. Logic holds their framework. The diagnostic model above has been modified by allowing wider scope of inference similar to the earlier “differential diagnoses” model. A quite radical model called “Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM),” was created about thirty years ago. Its advocates depend largely on statistics, with little interest in science. Discussion and comparisons with traditional and EBM models argue here undesirable shortcomings of the latter. Far from dismissing science, but robust medical science, knowledge, experience and professional clinicians continues in caring her/his individual patients.

Kenneth F. Schaffner compares the practice of biological and medical research and shows how traditional topics in philosophy of science—such as the nature of theories and of explanation—can illuminate the life sciences. While Schaffner pays some attention to the conceptual questions of evolutionary biology, his chief focus is on the examples that immunology, human genetics, neuroscience, and internal medicine provide for examinations of the way scientists develop, examine, test, and apply theories. Although traditional philosophy of science has regarded scientific discovery—the questions of creativity in science—as a subject for psychological rather than philosophical study, Schaffner argues that recent work in cognitive science and artificial intelligence enables researchers to rationally analyze the nature of discovery. As a philosopher of science who holds an M.D., he has examined biomedical work from the inside and uses detailed examples from the entire range of the life sciences to support the semantic approach to scientific theories, addressing whether there are "laws" in the life sciences as there are in the physical sciences. Schaffner's novel use of philosophical tools to deal with scientific research in all of its complexity provides a distinctive angle on basic questions of scientific evaluation and explanation.

Clinical diagnosis and management decisions rest on logical thought processes, yet may be only unconsciously employed in clincial practice; neither logic comprehensively taught in medical schools. This guide provides a guide to this fundamental aspect of training and practice. It retains the discussion of diagnostic logic as its core, addressing in complementary chapters medical logic in current major issues.

Bremen's study examines the development of William Carlos Williams's poetics, focusing in particular on Williams's ongoing fascination with the effects of poetry and prose, and his life-long friendship with Kenneth Burke. Using a framework based on Burke's and Williams's theoretical writings and correspondence, as well as on the work of contemporary cultural critics, Bremen looks closely at how Williams's poetic strategies are intimately tied to his medical practice, incorporating a form of methodological empiricism that extends his diagnoses beyond the individual to include both language and community. The book develops a series of rhetorical, cognitive, medical, and political analogues that clarify the poetic and cultural achievements Williams hoped to realize in his writing.