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SUMMARY:Causation\, models of disease and epidemiology - Alex Broadbent (D
 epartment of History and Philosophy of Science)
DTSTART:20090430T153000Z
DTEND:20090430T170000Z
UID:TALK17775@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Lauren Kassell
DESCRIPTION:In the nineteenth century\, many cases of disease previously t
 hought to have diverse causes began to be explained by the action of a sin
 gle kind of cause\, e.g. a certain parasitic infestation. Some have argued
  that this conceptual shift was key to the advancement of medicine through
  the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The focus of much recent epi
 demiology\, however\, is on chronic non-communicable diseases\, which freq
 uently do not seem to be attributable to any single causal factor. This pa
 per is an effort to resolve the resulting tension. I propose a 'contrastiv
 e' multifactorial model\, on the grounds that it links the notions of dise
 ase and of general explanation\, while avoiding the philosophical naivetie
 s and practical difficulties of the monocausal model.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, History and Philosophy of Science\, Department o
 f
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