{"id":341,"date":"2024-12-10T13:09:12","date_gmt":"2024-12-10T13:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michael-imhof.com\/?page_id=341"},"modified":"2024-12-27T19:52:32","modified_gmt":"2024-12-27T18:52:32","slug":"philosophy-of-medicine-and-man","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/michael-imhof.com\/eng\/philosophy-of-medicine-and-man\/","title":{"rendered":"Philosophy of Medicine and Man"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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PHILOSOPY OF MEDICINE AND MAN<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Volume I-III<\/h3>\n<\/div>
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FOREWORD<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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It is quite a strange thing how this work came about: In the beginning many years ago, I was on a holiday at the North Sea. I spent some beautiful sunny days at a well-known tourist spot on the North Sea. At the end of this holiday, I wanted to take the train back home. Since I still had some time, I have browsed the station library. Then I came across a book by David Peat, in which he wrote in a very understandable way about the secrets of quantum physics. This popular scientific book electrified me, and I read it in one go on the train home. As a physician, I had not the faintest idea of this mysterious physical world, which was supposed to be the basis of our modern understanding of the world. In this book, David Peat described the irregular, even the fundamental paradox in natural processes, which nevertheless merged into a harmonious whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It became immediately clear to me that these processes must also be of great importance for modern medicine. In the following years, I have read many popular science books and specialist journals on this subject and I have browsed the university libraries. It was only natural that I have increasingly tried to look at the often strange, abrupt and unforeseen disease processes that I encountered day after day at the sickbed from a more in-depth perspective. Thus, the concept of the first book emerged on the horizon of my thinking \u2013 initially in indistinct contours. The theme running through this book is the consideration of disease processes on a general, i.e. abstract or system-theoretical level. This inevitably led me to come across the concepts of self-organization, non-linearity and, last but not least, the concept of information as a fundamental dynamic \u201equantum\u201c of natural processes. These concepts underlie all natural processes and thus also the processes of health and illness. This is what the first book is about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was followed by the question of how and in what way disease processes in the body\u2018s periphery are represented in the brain\u2018s neuronal networks and how and in what way these could impact on the disease processes. I was suddenly confronted with a problem that had remained unsolved for thousands of years, namely the problem of the interaction between neuronal and mental activity, or the mind-matter problem. Looking back, I see this time as a cautious tentative search for a fixed horizon in a seemingly limitless no-man\u2018s land. Therefore, the consideration and investigation of this enormous problem takes up a large part of this second book.
I have tried to approach this problem, and in particular the problem of consciousness, from a perspective that is as empirically and scientifically sound as possible, i.e. from a physical and system-theoretical perspective. With all due modesty, I believe that I have subsequently recognized that the concepts of consciousness and mind play a central role in both the natural sciences and the humanities. Mind must be seen as a central moment in all processes in the world and thus in the evolution of the universe as a whole. In my opinion, human consciousness and the human mind are to be understood as central actors in world events as a whole. From this \u2013 at least that is my deep conviction \u2013 we can understand the fundamental, meaning-assigning and inexpressibly creative, role of humans in the processes of the world. This is what the third book is about. In these three books, I have repeatedly used the concept of self-organization as a central tool, and it is with great astonishment that I now realize that the intellectual structure and development history of the entire work presented also exhibit self-organizing characteristics. It was no small effort for me to translate the entire work into understandable English language. I am aware that I was not able to present this translation without errors, and I apologize to the readers in advance. I would be grateful for any criticism and information about errors in the translation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

W\u00fcrzburg, Germany, 2024
Michael Imhof<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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ILLNESS AND TIME<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

PHILOSOPY OF MEDICINE AND MAN VOLUME I<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Against the background of the current understanding of the world in physics and biology, Michael Imhof reflects on the topic of illness. He postulates the concept of time sensu Albert Einstein.
\u201cDisease and death are necessary conditions of an evolution of life. Life wants to design itself from the simple to the complex into its own spaces of time. A progression of time is not possible without symmetry breaks of the inner time structures of individual life as well as of life in its totality,\u201d says Imhof.
\u201cDiseases are more than pathological findings, they are more than blocked veins and burst intestines. Diseases are patterns and traces of a larger, an encompassing reality of life.\u201d Modern physics suggests that this reality is primarily non-material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a physician, Michael Imhof addresses his colleagues, \u201cMedicine thinks and acts between skepticism and hubris. Powerlessness should be the permanent wound of physicians – not the hubris of a technical perfection. A medicine without the realization of its own powerlessness becomes a Moloch that feasts on disease and suffering by bizarrely denying the dignity and efficacy of death.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michael Imhof repeatedly refers to Nicolai Hartmann, Carl Friedrich von Weizs\u00e4cker, and a host of other philosophers. Nevertheless, his philosophy is an independent, comprehensive outline of a philosophy of medicine – from the molecule to the attempt at a semantics of disease. For both theoretical medicine and natural philosophy, the book offers a valuable, inspiring enrichment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Illness and Time<\/strong>
Philosophy of Medicine and Man
Volume 1
Imhof, Michael
<\/em>Pabst, 2025, 294 pages, Hardcover
ISBN print 978-3-95853-925-9
ISBN ebook 978-3-95853-926-6<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Reading sample<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>
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ILLNESS AND MIND<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

PHILOSOPY OF MEDICINE AND MAN VOLUME II<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

How does the human mind influence disease? The physician and philosopher Michael Imhof explores the question of how diseases are represented in the patterns of the neuronal networks of the brain and in what way consciousness processes can influence the development and course of diseases in recursive loops. Fundamental to this question is the representation of the neuronal systems of the cental nervous system, starting at the level of individual neurons and extending to the cortical centers, as hierarchically organized systems of self-organizational processes that can be represented mathematically as attractors. These self-organizing neuronal processes interpenetrate each other in a nonlinear and nondeterministic dynamic; they are open to the future and highly creative. The central nervous system is organized into myriads of self-organizing processes from which semantic information, sensory and motor events, acts of consciousness, and emotions are generated. Starting from physical and systems theoretical approaches, the dynamic contexts and transitions between the material structures and processes of neuronal networks and the immaterial processes of consciousness and mind are presented in a way that has not been done before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a strictly scientific approach it is possible in this way to open up new illuminating approaches to the brain-mind problem. On the basis of a deepened illumination of the concept of information and entropy, conclusive insights can be derived into the way in which consciousness processes arise and how they might affect disease processes in the body periphery. Moreover, a theory of mind is established against the background of evolutionary processes as a whole. The book thus breaks new scientific ground: a richly detailed and inspiring body of knowledge for medicine and philosophy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Illness and Mind<\/strong>
Philosophy of Medicine and Man
Volume 2
Imhof, Michael
<\/em>Pabst, 2025, 348 pages, Hardcover
ISBN print 978-3-95853-849-8
ISBN ebook 978-3-95853-850-4<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Table of contents<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Reading sample<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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MODERN MAN BETWEEN PHYSICS AND METAPHYSICS<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

PHILOSOPY OF MEDICINE AND MAN VOLUME III<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Our current everyday worldview is based on rationality and scientific empiricism. Concepts such as \u201econsciousness\u201c or \u201esubjectivity\u201c are excluded from scientific thought. Natural sciences are characterized by a rigorous anti-metaphysical attitude.
Modern conceptions of matter, however, contain features that lack any counterpart in classical physics: Nobel laureate Roger Penrose and colleagues are convinced that the physical world arises in the wake of emergence from a Platonic world of ideas or mathematics. These considerations reach into the vicinity of metaphysics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The universe can thus be understood as a universal self-organizing process that generates semantic information. In this context the question of meaning is raised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matter loses on its fundamental levels the characteristics of the material, spatiotemporally fixed; the mathematical, spiritual emerges. Reality derives from the spiritual, matter emerges from spirit. Religions and spiritual traditions speak of a divine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modern Man between Physics and Metaphysics
<\/strong>Philosophy of Medicine and Man
Volume 3
Imhof, Michael
<\/em>Pabst, 2025, 246 pages, Hardcover
ISBN print 978-3-95853-917-4
ISBN ebook 978-3-95853-918-1<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Table of contents<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Reading Sample<\/div><\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>
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CONTACT<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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If you are interested in my book publications or artworks, I warmly invite you to\u00a0get in touch<\/a>\u00a0directly. I look forward to your inquiries and am happy to provide you with further information.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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