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Considers the increasingly popular, so‐called ‘No‐Miracles’ argument that we do have a valid inductive argument for supposing that our current theories, at any rate in physics, are substantially, if not wholly, true: it would be incredibly improbable that theories very far from the truth could make such extremely precise predictions, verified experimentally up to one part in a billion. Such ‘miracles’ of chance agreement can clearly be ruled out as themselves too improbable to be true. This apparently plausible argument is examined carefully and shown to consist in a number of separate steps, all of which are fallacious.

Some say that no challenge is more difficult than trying to change a traditional curriculum into a problem-based one. Maastricht University has been lucky in that it was able to start with problem-based learning (PBL) curricula right from its foundation. However, most universities that wish to adopt a PBL curriculum have to take a more difficult path. Some universities have walked this path successfully and it is worthwhile learning from their experiences. This chapter is based on involvement over the past twenty-five years in different models of PBL curricula, at Harvard Medical School, the University of Heidelberg, the Charité Medical Center in Berlin, and Maastricht University. It presents practical advice on the transition from a traditional to a PBL curriculum.

This chapter presents an ethnographic account with a recollection of the early debates about the New Pathway, thereby setting the stage for student experience. The ethnographic text grew out of a study of curricular innovation at Harvard Medical School, initially known as the New Pathway. The discussion begins with the study in the second year of the experimental curriculum, when 38 of 160 students in the incoming class of 1990 were selected to pursue the New Pathway, noting that discourses on medical competence characterize moments of educational innovation. The New Pathway was promoted as committed to the ideals of improving relationships between patients and physicians, and experimental tutorials led by clinicians exposed students to early patient contact, training in clinical skills and psychosocial assessment, and discussions of critical issues in the patient-doctor relationship.

This chapter presents an English translation of selected passages from John Warren’s Lectures on Anatomy, delivered between 1783 and 1812. Most of the lectures deal with technical aspects of anatomy, ranging from the structure and parts of the body through characteristics of bones and ligaments to making anatomical preparations. Here Warren offers valuable insights into American medical history and progress. The present selection focuses on the history and theory of anatomy that Warren taught as part of his course over the first three decades in the history of Harvard Medical School (HMS). Warren was one of the founders of HMS on September 19, 1782, with Aaron Dexter and Benjamin Waterhouse. He served as the school’s first Professor of Anatomy and Surgery.

Chapter 5 tracks the work of Walter Cannon from the beginnings of his career when he pioneered the use of X-rays for the study of internal phenomena to the late 1920s when he developed the modern concept of homeostasis. We show how Cannon moved from (a) identifying experimentally and epistemologically the mechanisms on which the digestive system was built to (b) theorizing the neurophysiological and pathological arrangement of the emotions, and eventually to (c) presenting the body as an integrated system that he called a “fluid matrix.” The digestive machine had given way to a hormonal and emotional whole and, later, to a homeostatic self. More than any of our other protagonists in this book, Cannon exemplifies the shift to a concept of the individual as brittle and constantly imperiled. “Our bodies,” he pronounced over and over in the 1930s, are “made of extraordinarily unstable material”; only organism-wide stabilization processes hold our bodies together.