Medicine is more than just a healing technique; it requires a philosophical approach that seeks to harmonize the laws of nature and human health. This has been the essence of medicine since ancient times, and it is an important value that should not be lost in the modern era.
Aristotle saw medicine as an exemplary case of transforming practical skills and knowledge into a true science. The knowledge of physicians is fundamentally different from that of specialists in a particular field. They are universal. He knows why a particular treatment is successful, i.e., he is familiar with cause and effect. These things are considered very modern. And in this respect, there is no question of applying natural scientific knowledge to the practical goal of healing in the same sense that it is used today.
However, what Aristotle emphasized in his discussion of medicine was not simply the success of the treatment, but the need for the physician to be in harmony with the principles of nature in the process. For him, the physician was not a mere technician, but a wise man with a deep understanding of the natural order and human life. Medicine is an art of manipulating the human body, but it is also inherently philosophical in the sense that it must interact with the laws of nature that are inherent in it. This suggests that medicine is fundamentally more than a technical discipline. Rather than treating the human body as a machine, medicine is an endeavor to respect and understand the life and laws of nature that reside within it.
The Greek concept of techne, on the other hand, does not refer to the practical application of theoretical knowledge, but to a specific form of practical knowledge: knowledge that constitutes a special and reliable ability to make things. The words ‘make’ and ‘fabricate’ are important here. To make something is to actually create something independent. The place of medicine within the realm of the concept of “technology” kunst=techne is quite exceptional, because there are no raw materials and no artificial products. Rather, the ability to create in medicine is the ability to regenerate, to restore, and this is the essence of medicine. We could say that doctors create health, but that would be wrong. First, it’s not new. Second, the result is not a demonstration of some unique and skillful skill. In other words, the question of whether a patient’s return to health is the result of medical knowledge and skill cannot be determined by looking only at the state of health. There is always the question of how much the doctor’s treatment played a role and how much it helped. This is where the suspicion of medicine comes in.
In a life-threatening situation, the doctor and his knowledge and skills have a special place, but when the situation passes, we begin to doubt medicine. Especially when treatment fails, there is a unique tension and adversarial relationship between fate and technology, along with a great deal of distrust. An unfortunate outcome is an irresistible force of fate. Thus, there is a mix of claims that medicine is ineffective and claims that the unfortunate outcome is the result of the doctor’s carelessness. Who is to judge?
This is where the excuses for medicine come in.
To distinguish medicine from the realm of technology, we need to place it within the larger context of nature. The whole idea of the ancients was that everything that could be technologically produced was done with human skill, in the light of nature. If we understand techne as the imitation of nature, what this primarily means is that human ingenuity fills the open field of possibilities given to us by the forms of nature itself. In this sense, it is clear that medicine is not an imitation of nature. Medicine is not an imitation of nature, because it does not have an artificial product, but rather health, or nature itself, as a medicine. These technologies do not create anything from scratch, and they have no material from which to create. It seeks to restore the natural process when it is disturbed, and in doing so, it chooses to disappear of its own accord as soon as it has restored the natural equilibrium of health. Therefore, its very practice must take place within the natural process.
Nature, as an object of modern natural science, is not something that can be integrated with medical and skilled labor. Modern natural sciences are characterized by an understanding of their knowledge as the ability to produce results. It isolates laws and rules in the natural order in mathematical and quantitative terms, i.e., it isolates causal relationships that allow for the possibility that various interventions can be repeated under precise conditions for human behavior.
In modern times, the concept of technology (thchnik), combined with the concept of science, reinforced and increased the possibilities of medicine and therapeutic procedures. Control over physical processes, application of theoretical knowledge, and division of labor allowed for increased specialization. These developments contributed greatly to the progress of medicine, but they also raised questions about the essential purpose of medicine. Can human health be treated simply as mechanical, quantified knowledge? Can the human body and mind be fully understood in such a way?
Enter the concept of equilibrium. The ancient Greek concept of nature is built on the idea of holism. Holism is an ordered structure that allows for the repetition of all the processes that occur in nature, or even kills them off in a certain form. Thus, nature can be said to take its own course. This is a fundamental idea in all theories of the origin of the universe.
If we assume the above concept of nature, then medical intervention should be understood as an attempt to restore a disturbed equilibrium. This equilibrium is the true product of medicine. The difference between recreating this equilibrium and all other constructions is as follows. Whereas in other constructions, brick by brick, we gradually bring about a change in the direction we desire, in the recreation of equilibrium, not only is the change sudden, but the force applied to restore equilibrium can, if misapplied, become a force that can destroy it.
In the medical realm, the point at which the reproduction of equilibrium truly succeeds is the point at which intervention is ultimately redundant and unnecessary: the physician’s efforts are complete as soon as health has found its own equilibrium. The practice of medicine is not actually involved in creating a new equilibrium, but rather in helping to maintain the fluid state of health equilibrium by holding it in place at all times. A disturbance of equilibrium, or disease, occurs when there is a clear disruption of factors that are directly related to the body’s ongoing state of equilibrium.
As we said before, medical intervention always has a double meaning. It can either be a disturbance itself, or it can have a special effect, treating the harmonious interaction of several factors. In other words, doctors have to constantly worry about the possibility of reversal and try to predict the consequences of their interventions.
Modern natural science, on the other hand, is not a science of nature taken as a self-sustaining and restorative totality. It is not based on the experience of living, but on the experience of producing and making; it is not based on the experience of equilibrium, but on the experience of planned organization. Today’s science rather transforms nature into the world of man, removing the natural dimension by means of rationally controlled, planned organization.
However, medicine is already inseparable from the presuppositions implicit in the ancient concept of nature and can never be understood as a technology, because it is not a technology in opposition to nature, but a technique integrated with nature. Medicine, which seeks to restore equilibrium, has a philosophical meaning that transcends the technological. It harmonizes human life with nature and provides insight into the human body and mind as a whole.
From this perspective, medicine is more than just the utilization of scientific and technical knowledge. It is the product of a deep understanding of the natural order and human existence, and of wisdom based on that understanding. This essence of medicine is still valid today, and the challenge for physicians is to maintain it in the face of technological advances.
