Complexity and Medicine

This book takes Complexity Theory and applies it to medicine where it has previously made little ground. It provides new hypotheses for multiple common but misunderstood diseases. Doctors in particular will understand that many diseases have remained unsolved due to a linear approach to what are complex biological systems, and failure to understand and apply Complexity Theory. Therefore, many common conditions have no known cause and consequently treatments are either ineffectual or non-existant, when many of these diseases are in fact preventable. There is growing interest in non-linear science, dynamic systems, chaos and complexity theory. This trend has directly involved other sciences, including biology, but has been little touched on by medicine. Readers of this book will: * Understand the difference between Linear Science and Complexity Theory, and how medicine has failed to apply the latter. * Recognise the advantages of using this understanding to generate realistic hypotheses for cause of disease. * Read how hypotheses so generated have been formulated for a number of common diseases.

Colin Alexander was a well respected Radiologist with a long interest in skeletal radiology in particular. He published numerous research articles including several related to Osteoarthritis and Osteoporosis. He became Foundation Professor of Radiology at the Auckland Medical School in 1976. He died aged 87, shortly after completing this book, which was a culmination of a lifetime of research and original thinking