ArticleTheoretical medicine and bioethics2010
Explanatory pluralism in the medical sciences: theory and practice.
Article in Theoretical medicine and bioethics, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Bioregulatory periodontal medicine: could the molecular networks, inflammation and system biology modify the auto-regulatory capacity of the patients?Frontiers in physiology · 2026Pooled it
- Receiving results of uncertain clinical relevance from population genetic screening: systematic review & meta-synthesis of qualitative research.European journal of human genetics : EJHG · 2022Pooled it
- Philosophy of psychiatry: theoretical advances and clinical implications.World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) · 2024Article
- From analytic to synthetic-organizational pluralisms: A pluralistic enactive psychiatry.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Article
- Uncertainty in and around biophysical modelling: insights from interdisciplinary research on agricultural digitalization.Royal Society open science · 2020Article
- The new medical model: a renewed challenge for biomedicine.CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal = journal de l'Association medicale canadienne · 2017Article
- Genes, body clocks and prevention of sleep problems.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2016Article
- [The Research Domain Criteria (Rdoc), reductionism and clinical psychiatry].Revue de synthese · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Explanatory pluralism is the view that the best form and level of explanation depends on the kind of question one seeks to answer by the explanation, and that in order to answer all questions in the best way possible, we need more than one form and level of explanation. In the first part of this article, we argue that explanatory pluralism holds for the medical sciences, at least in theory. However, in the second part of the article we show that medical research and practice is actually not fully and truly explanatory pluralist yet. Although the literature demonstrates a slowly growing interest in non-reductive explanations in medicine, the dominant approach in medicine is still methodologically reductionist. This implies that non-reductive explanations often do not get the attention they deserve. We argue that the field of medicine could benefit greatly by reconsidering its reductive tendencies and becoming fully and truly explanatory pluralist. Nonetheless, trying to achieve the right balance in the search for and application of reductive and non-reductive explanations will in any case be a difficult exercise.
Indexed as
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20721631What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.