ABSTRACT
Chapter 8 offers ‘humility’ as a guiding philosophical concept for the continued development of a fruitful population health science. The chapter begins with a restatement of the book’s orientation, philosophy of population health science as philosophy for population health science. It argues that three types of humility are essential to a successful and ethically sound population health science. First, epistemic humility is essential, in that population health science requires open-mindedness on matters such as how non-scientist members of a population can have knowledge about that population that is essential to population health promotion therein. Second, the chapter argues for sectoral humility, since population health science (in its efforts to promote health in all corners of social life) requires intersectoral collaboration between governments, non-profits, healthcare companies, and more. Third, interdisciplinary humility is essential because population health science is an interdisciplinary field, which not only requires collaboration between multiple disciplines, but that these collaborations be among equals—for example, epidemiology has no primacy over medical anthropology. The chapter reflects on some of the challenges of educating future experts in population health science.
