Some Philosophical Musings

In this post I thought I’d take a detour from the usual practical focus of this blog and discuss some of the deep background thinking that social scientists draw on when they study the built environment. The idea that health care delivery takes place within the built environment is the starting place for this blog's project, which is to bring insights from research in the social sciences to health improvement. Why the social sciences?  Because fields like architecture, geography, history and anthropology have been studying the way we interact with our environment for at least a century now.  And the same tools they've developed for looking at the macro-environment (cities, regions, and nations) can also be used to study the micro-environment (hospitals, clinics, and offices).

 It is an obvious truth that just as we affect our environment, it also affects us.  Yet, for much of the western intellectual tradition we have preferred to focus on our power to change the world, less on what it is doing to us. As far back as to Plato’s musings on the “just city,” the focus has been on the best way to do things.  In The Republic, Plato wrote about creating an environment with good laws and law-abiding citizens.  He didn’t dwell much on the physical aspects of the city.  He hardly touched on the fact that city life changes its inhabitants.  So even going as far back as the Socratic tradition we have been fascinated with what we can to our surroundings, less interested in what they do to us.