Illness and Time

Against the background of the current understanding of the world in physics and biology, Michael Imhof reflects on the topic of illness. He postulates the concept of time sensu Albert Einstein. “Disease and death are necessary conditions of an evolution of life. Life wants to design itself from the simple to the complex into its own spaces of time. A progression of time is not possible without symmetry breaks of the inner time structures of individual life as well as of life in its totality,” says Imhof. “Diseases are more than pathological findings, they are more than blocked veins and burst intestines. Diseases are patterns and traces of a larger, an encompassing reality of life.” Modern physics suggests that this reality is primarily non-material. As a physician, Michael Imhof addresses his colleagues, “Medicine thinks and acts between skepticism and hubris. Powerlessness should be the permanent wound of physicians - not the hubris of a technical perfection. A medicine without the realization of its own powerlessness becomes a Moloch that feasts on disease and suffering by bizarrely denying the dignity and efficacy of death.” Michael Imhof repeatedly refers to Nicolai Hartmann, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, and a host of other philosophers. Nevertheless, his philosophy is an independent, comprehensive outline of a philosophy of medicine - from the molecule to the attempt at a semantics of disease. For both theoretical medicine and natural philosophy, the book offers a valuable, inspiring enrichment.