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FORTHCOMING: Humanising Science and Medicine

Humanising Science and Medicine
Critical Paradigmatic Conversations

FORTHCOMING. Publication 1st October 2025

by Richard House (author and editor), with 14 others, plus
Foreword by Tess Lawrie
Afterword by Gloria Moss
Postscript by Andrew Wakefield

Interviews with medical professionals, philosophers, psychologists and researchers.

Humanising Science and Medicine: Critical Paradigmatic Conversations is a compilation of interview-dialogues with eminent philosophers, scientists, medical practitioners, psychologists and independent researchers that seeks to interrogate the deep nature of the prevailing scientific and medical-scientific paradigm, and where it might be problematic and wanting, and even ripe for paradigmatic change.

In the mid-1970s, philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend was speaking at length about the incipient authoritarian tendencies in ‘the new religion’ of mainstream science; and around the same time the highly influential radical humanist Ivan Illich published his seminal challenge to modern medicine, Limits to Medicine – Medical Nemisis: The Expropriation of Health.

Half a century on, this new book is very much in the tradition of Feyerabend and Illich – and indeed, in the spirit of Thomas Kuhn’s iconic 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (which book inspired the use of the term ‘paradigmatic’ in the book’s sub-title).

Framed by a substantial Introduction reviewing the critical literature in the field, and a Conclusion that considers the possibility of a much-needed revolution in our cultural understandings of science, and of disease and illness and their treatment, the core of the book consists of twelve in-depth interviews with philosophers, psychologists, medical doctors and cultural theorists and researchers – all of which interrogate the phenomenon of science per se and/or of modern medical bioscience, in their manifold aspects – including why medical science today is arguably fundamentally flawed from philosophical, medical and cultural-political viewpoints. Taken together, these deep conversations paint a picture that shows what might be wrong with modern science, and how it needs to change. Interviewees include Professors Barrie Condon, Brian Martin and David Morris, Drs Katherine Buchanan, Martin Cohen, Thomas Hardtmuth and Ian James Kidd, and psychologists Dr Bruce Scott and Sami Timimi.

Humanising Science and Medicine will be essential reading for all open-minded scientists and medical practitioners – and for all people with concerns about the directions that modern science and medicine are taking, and who more specifically are open to considering how we can create a genuinely humanistic system for supporting human health and illness that is properly grounded in true science, and which brings a holistic perspective to well-being in our increasingly narrow technocratic age.

Richard House Ph.D. is a former BPS chartered psychologist, a former psychotherapist and senior university lecturer in psychology, psychotherapy and education studies (early childhood). He has had a deep interest in the philosophy of science and the phenomena of well-being, illness and healing since the 1970s. This is his fifteenth book.

Selection of endorsements from back cover:

Before you read another headline about another scientific ‘breakthrough’ you should read this book.
Stephen J. Ball, Emeritus Professor, IOE, University College London

This book challenges the worst aspects of medical science dogma, providing hope for the paradigm shift needed for improved health and well-being.
Norman Fenton, Professor Emeritus, Queen Mary University of London

Endorses ‘a bottom-up democratisation of science’. Hopefully readers of this book will be inspired to be part of the so-called ‘paradigm shift’. God knows, we need it.
Dr Rosamond Jones, MD, FRCPCH, retired consultant paediatrician

A hugely significant contribution to the evolutionary paradigm change which could yet save the world. Soul and spirit are firmly back on the agenda.
Brian Thorne, Emeritus Professor, University of East Anglia

Table of Contents

Foreword – by Dr Tess Lawrie
Introduction – by Richard House, Ph.D.
Chapter 1 – Dr Martin Cohen: Paradigms, paradigms…
Chapter 2 – Barrie Condon: Science for heretics
Chapter 3 – Professor Brian Martin: Dissent in medicine
Chapter 4 – Professor David B. Morris: Postmodern illness?
Chapter 5 – Assoc. Professor Ian Kidd, with Onel Brooks: ‘We’re all Feyerabendians now’: where science and society meet
Chapter 6 – Dawn Lester & David Parker: The Western medical system is not based in genuine science
Chapter 7 – Vincent Di Stefano: On the humanisation of medicine
Chapter 8 – Dr Bruce Scott: The limitations of ‘medico-scientific’ psychology, mental healthism and ‘cure’
Chapter 9 – Dr Sami Timimi: Towards a more ‘humanistic’ psychiatry?
Chapter 10 – Dr Thomas Hardtmuth: Towards a ‘scientific revolution’ in modern medicine
Chapter 11 – Peter Taylor: The science of climate, Covid and conspiracy
Chapter 12 – Dr Katherine Buchanan: Science in a different key: the case of Goethean Science
Conclusion – by R. House, Ph.D.: A Working Manifesto for Humanising Science and Medicine
Afterword – by Professor Gloria Moss
Postscript – by Dr Andrew Wakefield
Further reading
Index
Acclaim for Humanising Science and Medicine