#5-90E. Bridging Theory and Practice: Why Modern Medicine Needs Philosophical Analysis (PNAS, 2019)

How can philosophical tools enhance modern clinical practice and scientific inquiry? This opinion article highlights that philosophy directly advances medicine through conceptual clarification, such as defining stemness to optimize targeted cancer therapies and refining immunological frameworks. Although the paper provides compelling theoretical frameworks and historical examples, it is limited by its conceptual nature without new empirical clinical trial data. Ultimately, adopting philosophical rigor enables clinicians to critically evaluate foundational medical assumptions, refine diagnostic categories, and make more precise, evidence-based therapeutic decisions in complex clinical scenarios.

Citation: Lucie Laplane, Paolo Mantovani, Ralph Adolphs, Hasok Chang, Alberto Mantovani, Margaret McFall-Ngai, Carlo Rovelli, Elliott Sober, Thomas Pradeu. Why science needs philosophy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2019.

URL: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1900350116

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