This volume will be a collection of chapters from authors with wide experience in their research field. The purpose is to produce a coherent book that reflects the common theme of theory in medical thinking and multidisciplinary research practice. In this context "theory" relates to frameworks of concepts, facts, models etc that help to inform practitioners (clinicians, scientists and engineers) both within their own fields and as they seek to share dialogue with colleagues from other fields.
Multidisciplinary Approaches to Theory in Medicine will therefore be integrative across a broad spectrum of fields within medicine. To achieve this the chapters will be associated with others in a number of meaningful ways. Each chapter will share a number of points of contact that will include at least two of the following:
- Similar biomedical area (e.g., immunity, neuroscience, endocrinology, pathology, oncology, haematology, …)
- Similar multidisciplinary theoretical contexts (e.g., modelling, analysis, description, visualization, complex systems, …)
- Similar multidisciplinary medical issues and questions (e.g., clinical practice, decision making, informatics, …)
- Uniquely explores role of interdisciplinary exchange in the development and expansion of medical theory
- Timely and insightful essays on the growth and development of medical theories from some of the world's top clinicians and medical researchers, including Werner Arber, Frank Vertosick, and David Weatherall
- Assembles diverse perspectives on medicine and physiology from biology, statistics, ethics, computer science, philosophy, history
- Uniquely illuminates the social and historical processes through which theoretical research translates into clinical practice
- Reveals the growing role of technology, especially computational modelling, in changing the nature of Western medicine
How do theoretical understandings in molecular biology, computer science, and statistics impact the decisions a doctor makes at a patient’s bedside? Why does clinical medicine need knowledge developed in other fields, and how can other fields benefit from engaging with medical experts? This volume brings together international perspectives on the unique nature of medicine as an inherently multidisciplinary field, with contributions from such highly respected thinkers, teachers, clinicians and researchers as Werner Arber, Paul Thagard, and David Weatherall. In essays that range from the practical to the historical, from the prescriptive to the deeply reflective, Multidisciplinary Approaches to Theory in Medicine describes how the central concern of medicine – disease and healing – has acted as a catalyst for novel transdisciplinary collaborations involving an astounding range of disciplines, including chemistry, decision science, history, computer science, ethics, physics, mathematics, statistics, biology, and philosophy.
