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Archive for September, 2014

Tranquility

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, photography on September 6, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Tranquille

Saturday afternoon…..a stroll along the banks of the Charente.

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Is science the study of objects?

Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, narrative, philosophy, photography, science on September 5, 2014| Leave a Comment »

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That’s the statement I came across in an interview with a “new realist” philosopher the other day. I’m not going to get into what on earth is “new realist” here just now but when he was asked if science (or more precisely Physics) had proven that the universe had no purpose, that it made no sense?

Well that’s a claim we often hear from people who claim the only reality is physical, the universe is random, and evolution isn’t “going anywhere”. This isn’t a world view I’m attracted to.

My understanding is that human beings exist, and that we all have consciousness and subjective experience. Values are important to us. For example, you can look at that photo above and describe it according to its botanical classification. I look at it and see a beautiful image. It’s the beauty of the image which strikes me.

This philosopher said that science is the study of objects, whereas for human beings it was often something not at all like an object which brought meaning to life. The example he gave was democracy. He said what colour was democracy? What were its dimensions? Science has no answer to these questions. Because democracy is not an object, it’s something which gives lives meaning.

I don’t know about you but that certainly gets me thinking. What about the “sciences” which don’t deal with objects? Like economics, or psychology, or “social sciences”?

Then I got to thinking about health and how, as a doctor, I needed to understand the body in a scientific way. I needed to know what to measure when, and what to do with the results. But I also needed to understand the lived experience of a person. When they talked to me about pain, about an itch, about nausea or dizziness, they were not talking about objects which could be measured. And what about the narrative…..how a person experienced and made sense of their illness?

So, there is something helpful in this idea of science being the study of objects. It helps us see the relevance of science and the absurdity of scientism (which claims ultimate and absolute authority for the “truth” as revealed by science.

Objects are an important part of reality, but they sure aren’t everything that exists!

 

 

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Art changes the world

Posted in art, creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on September 4, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Art is such a characteristically human activity. What would the world be like without art? What would the world be like if we only had science and judged everything only by its utility?

These beautiful works of art, so contextually sensitive and clever, change the lived environment of Angoulême.

Angoulême

Moon and plane

The newborn ange d'Angoulême

L'hotel sur l'hotel

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Just after sunset

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, photography on September 3, 2014| Leave a Comment »

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I’ve taken lots of photos of sunsets, but last night decided to take a photo just AFTER sunset……day becoming night, so to speak

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Just after sunset

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, photography on September 3, 2014| Leave a Comment »

image

I’ve taken lots of photos of sunsets, but last night decided to take a photo just AFTER sunset……day becoming night, so to speak

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September – time to think about learning again

Posted in from the living room, life, personal growth on September 2, 2014| 1 Comment »

seeds

There are some rhythms to the year which I really enjoy. Spring, with the cherry blossom, or autumn with the golds and reds of the trees are two seasonal ones for me. In my monthly themes, I think of September as being the start of the academic year, so this is my month to make some plans for learning in the year ahead. 

As I write this I’m sitting on a balcony in the courtyard of a B&B near Jarnac, in France. I’m looking for somewhere to move to, now that I’ve retired, and I’ve chosen France. So my main learning for the year ahead is a language goal – to become fluent in French.

i’ve got other learning plans too (not least starting to play music again, after a break of some 40 years!)

What would you like to learn this year? 

September is a good month to think about it, courses will be starting soon……

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Healing first

Posted in from the consulting room, health on September 1, 2014| 1 Comment »

tree repair

If you cut yourself, fall over and scrape your skin, or if you break a bone, your body’s healing response kicks in and makes a quick repair, then over a few days or weeks completely repairs the injury. Sometimes medical treatment is needed to support this process (cleaning the wound, applying a dressing, holding the broken bone in place with plaster, bandages, or even screws and plates), but the only way the damaged tissue recovers is through the body’s own healing system.

If you are infected with a virus or a bacteria, again your body’s healing response kicks in, attacking the offending organism, and repairing any tissues damaged by the infection. Antibiotics can kill some bacteria, and some viruses can be killed with drugs too, but we have no medication which heals the tissues or organs damaged by the infection.

There’s a third kind of disease/illness which isn’t caused by either trauma or organisms, and that’s the kind which is rising relentlessly, it seems, throughout the World. Everything from many cancers, to “inflammatory diseases” like asthma, “autoimmune diseases” like rheumatoid arthritis, chronic diseases like diabetes, multiple sclerosis, dementia and Parkinson’s disease, to genetic disorders, are understood best by us as pathologies, and whilst the body’s healing system constantly struggles with these disorders it never quite manages to throw them off. However, the healing response does try to limit damage, to repair what can be repaired, and to increase the over all resilience (defence and recovery) of the individual.

We seem to understand pathology better than we do healing. Maybe we need to invest more time, people and resources into changing that. 

And although people will always get sick or injured, and we will always need to find the ways to assist people with these illnesses, shouldn’t we also integrate actions and support which stimulate and enhance the healing response, not just in every therapeutic plan, but first of all, before we do anything else? (Well, of course, that depends on the urgency of the situation), but is there ever a case for ignoring the healing response?

Real healing is natural. But that doesn’t mean we can take it for granted.

 

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