Opening the Empirical Frame: Enchanting Medicine in A Secular Age
Zane Yi, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Loma Linda University
In his magnum opus, "A Secular Age," philosopher Charles Taylor’s notes that many people today live within an “immanent frame” (or, as Weber puts it, in a “disenchanted world”). Furthermore, for many of us, this frame is closed-off to transcendence. This means, that at a pre-reflective level belief in God (or the gods) is no longer a given, but a questionable possibility, at best. We, today, experience reality differently than in previous times and places; one might say, our experience has been flattened.
My presentation will focus on Taylor’s analysis of some of the assumptions that make such an experience of reality possible—narratives of history where scientific rationality is understood to have overcome religious irrationality, narrow understandings of experience and reason, and overly optimistic assumptions of human ethical ability. (These are, respectively, in Taylor’s terms, “subtraction stories of modernity,” “representational epistemology,” and “exclusive humanism.”)
After providing a concise explication of Taylor’s social analysis, I suggest its relevance for the medical community, which often perpetuates its own versions of the historical, epistemological, and ethical/anthropological views Taylor identifies. Re-enchanting medicine, i.e. opening the frame of medicine to transcendence, will require addressing these assumptions that shape how we experience reality before we start thinking about it and providing plausible alternatives. More specifically, this will involve retelling the history of medicine, recovering and reemphasizing its religious past, and how this past positively contributed to its development. Secondly, without abandoning its commitment to scientific rigor, there should be a recognition of its methodological limits, appreciating a broader view of human reasoning and experience. Lastly, there should be an affirmation of the compassionate ethical ideals of medicine that, at the same time, recognizes the very real challenge to actualizing them in light of the limitations of human volition, desire, and ability—that may, in the end, require transcendent inspiration and assistance.
In his magnum opus, "A Secular Age," philosopher Charles Taylor’s notes that many people today live within an “immanent frame” (or, as Weber puts it, in a “disenchanted world”). Furthermore, for many of us, this frame is closed-off to transcendence. This means, that at a pre-reflective level belief in God (or the gods) is no longer a given, but a questionable possibility, at best. We, today, experience reality differently than in previous times and places; one might say, our experience has been flattened.
My presentation will focus on Taylor’s analysis of some of the assumptions that make such an experience of reality possible—narratives of history where scientific rationality is understood to have overcome religious irrationality, narrow understandings of experience and reason, and overly optimistic assumptions of human ethical ability. (These are, respectively, in Taylor’s terms, “subtraction stories of modernity,” “representational epistemology,” and “exclusive humanism.”)
After providing a concise explication of Taylor’s social analysis, I suggest its relevance for the medical community, which often perpetuates its own versions of the historical, epistemological, and ethical/anthropological views Taylor identifies. Re-enchanting medicine, i.e. opening the frame of medicine to transcendence, will require addressing these assumptions that shape how we experience reality before we start thinking about it and providing plausible alternatives. More specifically, this will involve retelling the history of medicine, recovering and reemphasizing its religious past, and how this past positively contributed to its development. Secondly, without abandoning its commitment to scientific rigor, there should be a recognition of its methodological limits, appreciating a broader view of human reasoning and experience. Lastly, there should be an affirmation of the compassionate ethical ideals of medicine that, at the same time, recognizes the very real challenge to actualizing them in light of the limitations of human volition, desire, and ability—that may, in the end, require transcendent inspiration and assistance.