Philosophy of Medicine and Its Role in the Formation of the Methodology of Science

Abstract

The article raises the question of how much medical knowledge and its historical evolution, taken as a subject of scientific research, influenced the formation of the theory of science as a whole. Besides, it considers how it is possible, and whether it is possible at all, to build a general theory of scientific knowledge that would combine its cognitive, technological, and social aspects. The methodological programs analyzed in the article by Ludwik Fleck (“The Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact”), Michel Foucault (“The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception”, “Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason”, and “The birth of Social Medicine”) and Bruno Latour (“Pasteur. War and Peace of Microbes”, “Laboratory Life”, and “Science in Action”) based on the analysis of medical knowledge or knowledge of related fields, not only immerse the process of obtaining new scientific knowledge in a rather complex and contradictory social context, but also show a variety of research perspectives, in which scientific activity can be considered. The analysis carried out on the base of these works made it possible to demonstrate a close connection between the cognitive problems as they are and those historical and social conditions within which these problems arise and find their solution. It is in the works that consider medical problems, this connection manifests itself especially clearly. Thus, it can be assumed that just the works of ‘medical orientation’ had an impact on the fact, that the theory of science in the second half of the twentieth century, in addition to epistemological issues, increasingly began to include consideration of the historical and cultural context of scientific research.