ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the medical humanities should play a vital role in a more radical rethinking of the divide between science and the humanities. It shows that the medical humanities should fully acknowledge the pathological and healing powers of culture, and approach the human body as a complex bio-cultural fact. Modern medicine is confronted with cultural crossings in various forms: The migration wave in Europe has imposed a new awareness of the cultural dimensions of both physical and psychological therapy. Religious and ideological radicalisation has raised related questions about how to draw the line between pathology and conviction, and how to deal with cultural and religious discontent, also in clinical settings. The humanities are themselves a product of epistemological and ontological divisions that underpin the organisation of knowledge, and in the epistemic apparatus they are inscribed on the cultural side of the nature–culture divide.
