One Way To Assure The Health Of A Discipline Is To Nurture Contrasting Perspectives

Health is defined by Medical Dictionary for the Dental Professions as “A state of dynamic balance in which an individual's or a group's capacity to cope with all the circumstances of living is at an optimal level. ”. This in conjunction with how a discipline is defined as a “branch or domain of knowledge”, which includes areas of study such as Economics, Chemistry, etc. Therefore, I believe that the idea of “health of a discipline” varies from person to person, as health is not seen as universal and hence, people play a part in determining their health. Subsequently, the idea of health is interpreted to be the acquisition and systematization (production) of knowledge, where it is progressing at a sustainable rate. Contrasting perspectives are believed to be different viewpoints that oppose each other. However, there are no right and wrong associated with different perspectives. The idea of nurture is associated with the idea of development and growth.

Economics, at its core, is a discipline that studies resource distribution under the condition of scarcity as well as a study into human behaviour, about how they make decisions based on a system of incentives, benefits and costs. It is seen as a discipline that helps “understand historical trends, interpret today’s headlines, and make predictions about the coming years”. My personal experiences learning about macroeconomics have lead me to the study of the Neoclassical and Keynesian schools of thought. Keynesian economics were first used during the great depression, it advocates a managed market economy, where government intervention is used to optimal economic performance. However, Neoclassical economics argue that markets should be free and government intervention minimised as well as how consumers will aim to maximise utility, while producers will aim to maximise profit. The neoclassical school of thought was most prominent in the time period between 1970 and up to 2008, after which Keynesian economics became popular again. This was seen in the case of the 2008 financial crisis, which Neoclassical economics was said to be one of the main reasons the event occurred.

The financial crisis was started as the banks sold mortgage backed securities that had home loans to homeowners with questionable credit. Therefore, when property prices start to fall, homeowners defaulted on their loans, causing widespread distrust and the failure of the market system. It was only through government intervention that the market was able to be stabilised. Therefore, this shows how there is no perfect economic school of thought, which led to the conflict and contrasting belief between the two schools. This helps nurture the “health” of the discipline as it allowed the development of new ideas in addition to the redevelopment of existing ideas inside macroeconomics. Furthermore, it is also through the usage of both schools of thought that leads to growth of economy, as the schools are effective in different situations.

Eastern medicine and Western medicine, these are two contrasting approaches towards medicine. The way western countries develop medicine vary from eastern countries in that the western method relies on hypothetic deduction as opposed to inductive reasoning. Furthermore, the western approach treats the disease and health separately, while the Eastern approach seeks to bring balance inside the body.

Therefore, any comparison between the two approaches are very difficult, as teaching, treatment and terminology are all different. However, on rare occasions, both approaches may work together to produce astonishing results, as in the case of Qinghaosu. Qinghaosu or Artemisinin is a group of drugs developed to combat a type of malaria, where it is seen as one of the preferred drug for treatment of malaria. This drug enabled its creator, Tu YouYou to win the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for 2015. It is seen as an example of how the contrasting perspectives of eastern and western medicine has lead to the nurturing of the “health” of this discipline, as the discovery of Qinghaosu revolutionised anti-malaria treatment.

Electronic dance music (EDM) is personally my preferred music, it is a range of electronic music genres that are designed to be mixed together by disc jockeys (DJs) to create a track of music. It is seen as one of the most popular genres of music in the recent years. However, in the past, particularly between the late 1980s and early 1990s, EDM was seen as a niche genre in the United States. This was especially reinforced by the various laws and policies enacted by the US government to limit spread of rave culture, due to the perceived affiliation between drug use and EDM. In the late 1990s, due to the appearance of popular EDM songs such as Madonna’s Ray of light and the appearance of internationally acclaimed artists such as David Guetta, that EDM in America started to flourish. This demonstrates how even if there are contrasting perspectives about EDM, it still managed to develop through the efforts of various artists and become one of the most popular genres of music. Those contrasting views being the EDM musicians themselves and the various media outlets and record industries.

However, even if Neoclassical and Keynesian economics can “nurture” the health of economics, there are examples of how contrasting perspectives in economics do not nurture the health of the discipline. In Greece, there are widespread tax evasion in addition to extensive pensions. The government attempts to use public spending to smooth out issue due to global recession but the issue lies in that it uses borrowed money to balance out the spending. However, investors no longer have confidence in Greek economy, hence they demand increasing rates of interest. Credit rating agencies rated Greek government debt to junk, which is what caused the crisis in Greece. This shows how even though the contrasting views between Neoclassical and Keynesian economics had helped developed both viewpoints, but in this case Keynesian economics, which led to extensive usage of Fiscal policy in the European Union. This “fiscal austerity in a downturn both deepens the slump and makes it harder to repair fiscal finances”. This is seen as Fiscal policy usage has caused unemployment to increase to around 20 percent in addition to 40 percent youth unemployment. Wages have fallen by 20 percent, and welfare programs as well as pensions down 70 percent, while Poverty is up substantially as in 2009 extreme poverty was at 2. 2% and by 2015 it was 15%, which had septupled.

The combination of western and eastern medicine can work very well, as mentioned above with the example of QInghaosu. However, this combination of Chinese and Western medicine do not always work well together. Hong Kong is a place where east meet west, this can be seen in the treatment of Eczema, as both Dermatologist and Chinese medicine professionals are frequented by large number in people in search of treatment. However, eczema is extremely common in locations, where 1 in 5 people have eczema[footnoteRef:10], adding up to a total of 16 million children with eczema. Western medicine is seen as ineffective as once the patient stopped taking medication, which is typically steroids or immunosuppressant drugs to combat their recurrent eczema. Even with the newest drug, Dupilumab, which is “monoclonal antibodies. ”. This drug binds itself to a specific molecular chain linking to a cytokine which stops it from functioning. Therefore, representing how the chronic inflammatory skin can only be temporarily suppressed by the medication instead having a curative effect.