Questioning Biomedicine’s Privileging of Disease and Measurability, 2021, Kroll

The entire concept of psychosomatic illness also predates the germ theory of disease and modern medicine, and is basically 99% identical to its original construct. Somehow that's always brushed over, in a kind of "ancient wisdom" thing that everyone knows is bunk. It's literally pre-scientific medicine, probably one of the only ideas remaining from before.

 

From the first sentence I knew exactly where this was coming from. And the following:

Confirmed it.

I've only recently come to learn how "anti-science" the ideologies rooted in post modernism are. Science is only one type of knowledge production, which historically has been wrongly privileged over others. They teach this stuff in the classroom next to mine.

I can heartily recommend "Cynical Theories" by Helen Pluckrose for an explanation of what on earth these people are on about.

 

I can tell just by the language used that whoever wrote this has been influenced directly or indirectly (by which I mean taught the ideas without knowing where they came from) by Michel Foucault's idea of science as a tool of power to oppress. This random youtube video I just found gives a rough idea:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5j3it7w-ZM

 

Ha! Excuse me wittering on to myself on this thread, but I'm proud to say I've just discovered that I called it 100% correctly. I just clicked on the link in the OP to look at the paper, and skimming over it I found this:

The phrase "medical gaze" is straight out of Foucault, and in this paper it is hyperlinked to another paper which begins

I shall sleep smugly tonight.

Here's something on Foucault's idea of the medical gaze for anyone who's interested:

https://in-training.org/medical-gaze-4170

 

I think Andrew Goddard's remarks as well as Alaistar Miller's on Radio 4 just amply demonstrated that Foucault's concept of the medical gaze was spot on.