ABSTRACT
An expanding epistemology has generated enhanced understanding of the mechanistic basis and existential impact of chronic pain as a complexity-based systems event. The basic and clinical sciences, humanities, and experiential narratives of patients all contribute lenses through which we can examine and demystify the enigma of persistent pain. It is only through the combination of distinct domains of knowledge that we can both comprehend pain as a dysfunction of the dynamical, nonlinear adaptability of the nervous system, and at the same time apprehend the manifestations of these changes within the networked hierarchy of interacting systems that is the patient. These are concepts that are inherent to and derived from complexity theory, and the use of a complexity-based model of pain may be important to fully reconcile notions of disease and illness, and t these within a more encompassing framework of diagnostics and therapeutics. Thus, the study of pain conjoins neuroscience to a burgeoning discourse addressing concepts of brain-mind, diseaseillness, and the ethical dimensions of care.
