The Relationship Between Medicine and Natural Sciences During the Twentieth Century — Aspects of the Theory of Science

Abstract

During the nineteenth century, the enormous development of natural sciences provided the essential breakthrough to a modern medical science in the sense of “naturwissenschaftliche Medizin” [17, 18]. During this period it became clear that medicine, as an applied science that obtains the essential parts of its theoretical and practical basis from outside, depends on new knowledge gained in particular from the natural sciences. Today, the relationship between these two branches of science is the decisive factor in the progress of medical science, as well as being an essential part of medical practice and its thought, but, as in the nineteenth century, it also leads to one-sidednesses of theoretical medical concepts. Thus, medicine, as a human science, conceptionally always needs the integration of components from the natural sciences and the humanities. However, even in the twentieth century, this has not been sufficiently realized. As a result of the impressive successes achieved by components of the natural sciences in medicine, the conceptional thinking of medicine became narrower because of a generalization of the meaning of these contemporary empirical results. This affected medical theory and practice unfavourably, in particular due to their general susceptibility to hypotheses.