Surgeon and the butcher

In our examination of the epistemology of science you may have noticed a profound similarity between the limitations of the pattern apprehending mechanism of our senses and the reductive practices used in the scientific method.
In science we reduce what is already reduced by the limitations of our senses to find cause and to discover constituents parts to the objects we perceive.
Although all this reduction seems troubling at first it has served us well, through reductive methods by eliminating variables we have discovered the constituent parts to substances that the ancients believed were singular like air, now we know that air consists of nitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide, hydrogen and a few other gases and we have even worked out how to seperate these constituents and use them for a host of different specific tasks.
This is the rub, this is the most important part of the equation, the reintegration of the knowledge of the unique constituent back into the complex whole so that knowledge is useful.
It is for this reason scientists use live animal testing because they want to test the effect of therapies on the complexity which is life.
In health science it is not so much the reductive element of research that’s important – it’s the reintegration of the therapy back into the complex whole that is important.
It’s is easy dissect a living creature but sowing it back together so it’s still living is how we discriminate between a surgeon and butcher.
Increasingly science is desperate to test therapies in the most complex and wholistic way they can because it’s the only way they can be proven safe.