Last update:
09-Mar-2009

Contemporary medicine is a major component of modernity, with which it maintains a dialectical relationship. Although modernity underlies the present culture, since World War II an alternative view of all aspects of human action has developed, a view that has taken shape within the theoretical framework of the so-called post-modern era. In medicine this has become apparent in the renaissance of former methods, theoretical concepts and practices, which constitute the basis of complementary alternative medicine (CAM) or holistic, whole person medicine. This paper focuses on the relationship of western medicine and CAM with modernity and post-modernism respectively. It is argued that these different approaches do not exclude each other and that each can in its own way be useful.

Key words: Alternative, Descartes, Holistic, Modernity, Post-modern, Technology.