Store:LPLen01

Probabilistic language logic in medicine

Every scientific idea (whether in medicine, architecture, engineering, chemistry, or any other subject), when put into practice, is subject to small errors and uncertainties. Mathematics - through probability theory and statistical inference - helps to precisely control and thereby contain these uncertainties. It always has to be considered that in all practical cases "the outcomes also depend on many other factors external to the theory", whether they be initial and environmental conditions, experimental errors, or something else.

All the uncertainties about these factors make the theory–observation relationship a probabilistic one. In the medical approach, there are two types of uncertainty that weigh the most on diagnoses: subjective uncertainty and casuality.

It becomes essential, therefore, in this scenario to distinguish between these two uncertainties and to show that the concept of probability has different meanings in these two contexts.

We will try to expose these concepts by linking each crucial step to the clinical approach that has been reported in the previous chapters and in particular the approach in the dental and neurological context in contending for the primacy of the diagnosis for our dear Mary Poppins.