Medicine, postmodernism, and the end of certainty

BMJ 1996;313:1568-1569 (21 December)

Editorials

Medicine, postmodernism, and the end of certainty

Where one version of the truth is as good as another, anythinggoes

"The Enlightenment is dead, Marxism is dead, the working classmovement is dead and the author does not feel very well either."¹

I came across a curious word the other day--credicide. The deathof belief. Not this or that one but all and every. Strictlyspeaking, of course, it means the active killing of belief ratherthan just its simple demise. Some dark agent has been out muggingbelief in the night, jumping it, slicing it up while our eyeswere turned to see what the arc lights of the media were bringingus this time.

What is dying of course is not just Progress, Education, Science,Justice, or God--though all these do look anaemic shadows oftheir former selves. What is dying is the House of Belief itself.Down in the basement the machines are getting . . . [Full text of this article]

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