The Specialist
The Specialist
The greatest danger to avoid in future work is fragmentation—that curse of science, of administration, of education, and of our present way of life. It has arisen because knowledge has grown at the expense of understanding. The inevitable result has been a plague of so-called experts, for the most part men and women who have wasted their lives in learning more and more about less and less, all sublimely unconscious of the fact that at the end of the road along which they are traveling will be found the ideal expert—an individual who knows everything about almost nothing.
Sir Albert Howard, “How to Avoid a Famine of Quality”
November 1947
Painting: Fragmentation. Aviva E. Weinberg
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L’IL OLE ME said...
So true! Typical (meaning I KNOW there are exceptions) scenario: Dr. (aren’t they all?) Expert will prescribe a treatment for a given problem. It may inevitably cure the specific ill, but this so-called solution will nonetheless alter the system so that a thousand new problems, often much worse than the original, are created. EVERYTHING in life is interrelated. But Dr. Expert feels free to cite the prescribed protocol as a successful one simply because his/her myopic views do not allow them to see beyond their area of expertise. Sad but too often true. Moral of the story? BE THE EXCEPTION!
Wednesday, May 19, 2010 09:48 AM
HANDMAIDEN said...
This is why I so appreciate the whole-istic attitude of the herbal medicine course I am studying. We students are encouraged to develop in the “art of medicine,” a consideration of the person as a whole being—body and soul, not as a series of body parts or symptoms.
I am especially impressed by the need to look for real causes, usually the fundamentals of diet and lifestyle. So many people take altering medicines or have organs removed in the hopes that will solve the problem, while persisting in the poor habits that will continue to afflict their health.
Thursday, May 20, 2010 01:24 PM
Tuesday, May 18, 2010