Alternative medicine is considered a set of therapeutic and diagnostic disciplines that exist outside the conventional health system. Current use of this 'class' of medicine is amply extended in both developed and undeveloped world. One of the causes of increasing use of alternative medicine is recent professional validation. Many general divulgation texts claim and justify its use based on academic information without scientific quality. In this essay we will analyze the available scientific evidence as well as logical and philosophical bases of this so called medicine.

The medical thought and practice pose a number of philosophical problems; these include the characterization of medicine itself, and the epistemological, ethical and logic problems. This essay will philosophically address six current medical problems: The biomedical investigation -evolution today and the implication of the scientific development policies-; the evidence based medicine -its characterization as new paradigm, and the analysis of its “real” role in medical practice-; the characterization of medicine as knowledge and practice -What do we understand by medicine, art, science or technology?-; the problem of lack of a general disease concept -the personal epistemology and its implications in the physicians’ work-; finally, the philosophical examination on the validity of so named alternative medicine. This essay intends to show that the philosophical addressing of many medi...

This paper outlines the concept of disease as a theoretical model, that is, a schematic conceptual representation to describe disease in theoretical terms (of high generality). We will utilize mathematical concepts, such as set and function, and general theories like the general systems theory and emergentist materialism.

This is the first of a three part series dedicated to analyze one of the central concepts of medicine: disease. Our first mission will be to revise the diverse and disperse disease definitions. This historical and epistemological revision will stress the naturalist-normativistic dichotomy and Sadegh-Zadeh’s novel mathematical proposal.

This second delivery is dedicated to point out and clarify some omissions that to our opinion the diverse proposals of disease concept exhibit. This critic hopes to orientate the interest toward the use of diverse concepts, theories, and metatheories that may contribute to the best execution of a theoretical model of disease. The analysis of the concepts, the utilization of the general theory of systems, mathematical models, and emergentism theory will demonstrate that to reach a general concept of disease is not possible only by going to the parcel of empiric investigation.