Historia medycyny według Tadeusza Bilikiewicza

• Authors: Ryszard W. Gryglewski

Title variants

EN

The History of Medicine according to Tadeusz Bilikiewicz

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

Tadeusz Bilikiewicz (1901-1980) was one of the outstanding Polish psychiatrists. He specialized in the treatment of psychosis and psychoneurosis, as well as in the search for natural and philosophical foundations of higher nervous activity. He became closely interested in philosophy during his studies. Interest in philosophy ignited his research on the history of culture and, dear to him as a doctor, reflections on the subject of the history of medicine. He was privileged to work with Heinrich (Henry) Sigeristem (1891-1957) and Osweim Temkin (1902-2002) one of the greatest scholars studying the past of medicine of those days. For several years, he also worked as an assistant of Władysław Szumowski (1875-1954), a professor of history and philosophy of medicine at the Jagiellonian University. After World War II, he bound his fate with the Medical University of Gdansk, where he was appointed a professor degree. This article is an attempt to analyze the changes taking place in the views of Tadeusz Bilikiewicz as to the substance of the subject of history of medicine and its actual research and cognitive abilities. Initially, in accordance with the principles proclaimed by the so-called Leipzig school and by the majority of Polish historians of medicine, including Władysław Szumowski, he believed that the medical history may be philosophically encompassed by an effective tool of critical attention and may fulfil an important role in university didactics. He was of the opinion of philosophical approach to historical problems and close contact of medical history with contemporary theoretical problems of medicine and with medical practice. Over time, delving into certain epistemological problems, Bilikiewicz began to question the above way of understanding and of practicing the history of medicine. This was due to his own reflections supported by reading works of Karl Joël (1864-1934) and Heinrich Wölfflin (1864-1945), and above all, the works of Ludwig Fleck (1896-1961), with whom Bilikiewicz entered into polemics. Bilikiewicz, by stressing the fragmentation of our knowledge and the imperfections inherent in the nature of the knowing mind, he introduced the concept of the cognitive orientation. We gain it through the transformation of reality made by our mind, which looks for repeatable phenomena and multiple elements of a given structure, trying to present them in the form of hypotheses, theorems and definitions. The cognitive orientation, however, is doomed to imperfect and often deceptive methods of analogy and intuition. As a result, we may only dispose of certain perspective that allows us to merely understand the main features of the studied reality, resulting in gaining of certain general knowledge, but invariably incomplete one. This situation Bilikiewicz describes as perspectivism of researc , which is similar to the theory propounded by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955). Thus, the history of medicine, although it searches for knowing the truth, which Bilikiewicz recognized as objectively existing, will not be able to perceive it, and may only come close to it. It is impossible, therefore, in absolute and constant terms, to talk about the history of medicine as a field of science. Only the analysis of the sources and the facts bear, according to Bilikiewicz, hallmarks of scientific inquiry. When we begin to hypothesise or proceed with research reconstruction, the scientific designation will be difficult to maintain. Epistemological scepticism of Bilikiewicz clearly stood out from among contemporary historians of medicine, among who, the views professed by him were neither understood nor met in a broader debate.

Keywords

EN

history and philosophy of medicine; Tadeusz Bilikiewicz; Jagiellonian University; cognitive orientation

• Publisher: Instytut Historii Nauki Polskiej Akademii Nauk
• Journal: Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 58
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 39-56

Contributors

author

Ryszard W. Gryglewski

• Katedra Historii Medycyny UJ CM Kraków