Shane Neilson

Negative Capabilizing Biomedicine through Translationality

Introduction

Negative capabilizing biomedicine through translationality. Critically examines biomedicine through translationality, exploring its limitations and rethinking fundamental capabilities and impacts in modern healthcare.

Abstract

Review

The title, "Negative Capabilizing Biomedicine through Translationality," immediately signals a highly original and theoretically sophisticated intervention into contemporary medical discourse. Absent an abstract, the review must necessarily be speculative, deriving its understanding from the provocative interweaving of philosophical concepts and specific scientific domains. The invocation of "Negative Capability," a concept from Keats, suggests an embrace of uncertainty, ambiguity, and perhaps a critique of biomedicine's relentless pursuit of definitive facts and solutions. Applying this to "Biomedicine" indicates a fundamental re-evaluation of its epistemological foundations, ethical practices, or dominant methodologies, proposing a move away from a purely positivist or reductionist paradigm. The core mechanism, "through Translationality," adds another crucial layer of complexity. Translational research, commonly understood as bridging basic science to clinical application, is here proposed as the lens or site for this "negative capabilizing." This could imply several things: a critique of the often-linear, outcome-driven nature of translational research that might inadvertently obscure complexities or prematurely force certainty; an argument that embracing uncertainty *within* the translational process itself could lead to more robust or ethical outcomes; or even a suggestion that translationality, by its very nature, exposes the limitations and uncertainties inherent in biomedical progress, thus "negative capabilizing" it. The paper likely delves into areas such as the philosophy of medicine, science and technology studies (STS), or critical medical humanities, challenging conventional notions of progress and utility. Given the title's intellectual ambition, this paper promises to be a significant contribution to rethinking the boundaries and goals of biomedicine. Its strength lies in its conceptual novelty, offering a potentially powerful framework for understanding areas of medical practice often characterized by doubt, complexity, and unresolved problems, such as chronic illness or rare diseases. The precise methodology, scope, and empirical grounding of this argument remain unknown without the abstract. However, it undoubtedly aims to foster a more nuanced, ethically reflective, and perhaps more humble approach to medical science and its application, urging biomedicine to cultivate a capacity for "being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason."

Full Text

Comments

You need to be logged in to post a comment.