Miriam Solomon, “Making Medical Knowledge” (Oxford, 2015)
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What is the main focus of Miriam Solomon’s book *Making Medical Knowledge*?
Hello and welcome to New Books and Philosophy, a podcast channel with the New Books Network. I'm Carrie Figdur, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa. And I'm co host of the channel along with Robert Talise, professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University. Together we bring you conversations with philosophers about their new books, drawing from a wide range of areas of contemporary philosophical inquiry. Today's interview is with Miriam Solomon, Professor of Philosophy at Temple University. Her new book, Making Medical Knowledge, is just out from Oxford University Press. How are scientific discoveries transmitted to medical clinical practice? When the science is new, controversial, or simply unclear, how should a doctor advise his or her patients?
How should information from large randomized controlled trials be weighed against the clinician's hardware judgment from treating hundreds of patients? These are some of the questions that are considered in the epistemology of medicine. In making medical knowledge, Solomon provides an historically grounded critical assessment of the methods used in recent decades to turn basic science into medical knowledge. These include consensus conferences. evidence based medicine, translational medicine, and narrative medicine. Each of these methods, she concludes, has a place to play in what she calls an untidy methodological pluralism. Let's turn to the interview. Hello Miriam, are you there? Um hello Carrie. Yes, this is Miriam.
Hi, welcome to New Books in Philosophy. Thank you. Uh I'm very happy to be talking with you today about your new book, Making Medical Knowledge, which kind of introduced me to the whole area in a way of of epistemology of medicine. Um, so before we get into the details of the book, I'd like to get a little bit of background about yourself, how you got to philosophy, um, and then how you came to write this particular book.
Okay. Um Well I got to philosophy in my teens, asking questions about the nature of the universe and the existence of God and Um but I was also interested in science, so I was a science undergraduate and um Uh, concentrated in history and philosophy of science. This was at Cambridge. And then I decided I wanted to go into the philosophical issues more deeply. And did a PhD in philosophy. Um at Harvard writing on the philosophy of Quine, who was an epistemologist, logician, philosopher of science. Um And after that I uh became more applied and Moved back into philosophy of science. And wrote a book called Social Empiricism. And that was really a book in social epistemology of science. And as that book was received
I was asked to participate in a consensus conference, in a medical consensus conference. for the surgery of trauma. And the invitation came because I had written about consensus and dissent in science and in fact I'd taken um the um less usual position of uh thinking that dissent was very productive and consensus was worth questioning. So I thought I would go to this conference with all my questions about is consensus really valuable and what you give up when you get consensus. And um I was very surprised that Uh, there wasn't any dissent at the beginning of the conference to turn into consensus. And it was that initial surprise about What these conferences were about. That led me into medicine. And um I thought at first I was gonna write a book on medical consensus conferences.
And but that led me into this was the late nineties into seeing what happened to them after the birth of evidence based medicine. And that itself led me into further things such as Um uh narrative medicine and translational medicine. So in the end it Ended up being uh book about for recent medical
methods. Ca could you say a word about the rel the relationship between, you know, what you call the epistemology of medicine and um this broader social epistemology that you've been working in for a while?
Sure. Um Well, social epistemology, broadly speaking, is looking at aspects of knowing Pero are about more than individual minds.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main focus of Miriam Solomon’s book *Making Medical Knowledge*?
0:08–7:24
2
How did Miriam Solomon’s early career and philosophical background lead her to study medical epistemology?
7:24–14:33
3
What are consensus conferences and how have they been used to translate scientific findings into clinical practice?
14:33–20:43
4
Why does Solomon critique the hierarchy of evidence in evidence‑based medicine?
20:43–27:55
5
How does narrative medicine contribute to patient care and the creation of medical knowledge?
27:55–34:27
6
What is translational medicine and what challenges does it face in moving research to the bedside?
34:27–40:09
7
How do changes in research funding, big‑pharma influence, and social media affect the production of medical knowledge?
40:09–45:43
8
What is Solomon’s ‘untidy methodological pluralism’ and what future directions does she suggest for the philosophy of medicine?
45:43–1:03:54
Speakers
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