Treatise: about directions

I will use an example of a soccer match to explain why and where conventional scientific medicine and holistic approaches differ and why the former is limited in my opinion:

Have you ever wondered what Daniel Dephoe's Friday would think why a player kicks a penalty ball during a soccer match? If Friday was using a scientific approach he would be interested in the reason, more specifically in the why that happened in the past. He might start to analyze the conditions on which a penalty occurs. What is common? He may look at many matches and find out that the spectators differ, sometimes a big crowd, sometimes only a few people. The location is also not determining the penalty, be it a big stadium or a small playing field. Penalties happen at any time of a match, also at any time of the day. Even the foul is different, sometimes it's an opponent touching the ball with his hands, sometimes a player is pushed to the ground by an opponent, sometimes a player falls without someone else even touching him.

As an outside observer Friday might find out that there is just one thing that is common to all penalties. He will agree that there is always blown just before a penalty is given: the whistle of the referee. In Friday's scientific world this must be the reason for a player kicking a penalty, mustn't it? -

Wouldn't you agree that we are missing important points when explaining the intention of a player kicking a penalty ball by the blow of the referee's whistle?

One aspect of my criticism of the conventional medicine is linked to our small excursus. I differentiate two types of conventional doctors: On the one hand the ones that are not at all interested in the why of a symptom or a disease. They just want to help the patient, to facilitate his life and to make the impediment go away. Ease is their utmost target while applying their treatment. They will not question the reason of a symptom, they will even neglect the desire to find a reason or cause at all. It is out of scope for them.

On the other hand there are doctors who look for causes of symptoms in the past and purely in the past. They are like Friday trying to understand the circumstances of the penalty in a scientific way. But their causes can only relate to something which has already happened. It's always past they are using to explain. They are bound to a linear understanding of time, of cause and effect.

Both groups are limited in my opinion. They lack important points.

Hence and opposed to these two groups I define a true doctor of holistic background, a real healer so to say, as someone who accepts that there are different types of causes or explanations and who is convinced that symptoms have a meaning.

A true doctor would identify at least four types of reasons for a player kicking a penalty: The first also being the blow of the referee's whistle as the triggering event and the reason in the past. Secondly, of course, the player's intention to score a goal and by that to win the match - notably a reason in the future. Without the rules, the underlying pattern of soccer games, there wouldn't be a penalty either. The third reason thus being the fact that a lot of games had been played and a lot of penalties had been given before. Finally, another reason for the penalty is purely the sole material existence of the ball, the field, the scorer's shoe, the goal, et cetera. Without them no penalty kick would be possible, either.

It is, by the way, known that these four categories of causes (efficient, final, formal, material cause) had already been identified and used by the ancient Greeks as Aristotle wrote more than 2000 years ago. It is thus very strange to me why these ideas are still neglected by modern medical science.

Hence, it is more than legitimate to identify causes for human behaviour or in general for events and deeds that lay not only in the past, but also in the future.

I do not only believe that there are causes for symptoms that long into the future, but that these symptoms are also meaningful; that it is not by chance that human beings are suffering from any disease. Read more about this in another of my treatises.