As my friend Henrik (a medical student) put it: medicine is a craft.
That doesn't mean it doesn't use science or the scientific method (a
medical examination is actually a quite good example of the method)m but
there is also a lot of rules of thumb, voodoo technology (we *still* don't
know why narcosis works!) and plain art, just like in any applied area.
Medicine can also be seen as a descriptive science, studying how the human
body works, and that is definitely a science.
We have to be careful in distinguishing what goes on in the emergency ward
from what goes on in the lab.
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Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
nv91-asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~nv91-asa/main.html
GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y