ABSTRACT

In the seventeenth century, this plain description of general perceptual attentiveness morphed into the particular, as 'emotional capacities'; and by the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries 'sensibility' was often associated with an educated or refined taste, but also the capacity to feel compassion for suffering' of others, aligning it with empathy. 'Sensitivity', 'Having the function of sensation or sensuous perception', is considered to be synonymous with 'sensibility' but there is an important qualitative difference, one of intensity, where such a perceptual response is acute: 'feels quickly and acutely'. The received wisdom is that medical students, in the absence of tacit knowledge held by experts, should use formal, logical, analytical methods such as hypothesis generation and forms of differential diagnoses to avoid misdiagnosis. sense and enhance perception, averaging and use of multiple exemplars, have their political counterparts in two kinds of democracy. The first, averaging, is movement towards a norm. The second, multiple exemplars, is based on respect for difference.