Healing and Human Potential
Subtitled Towards a new science of healing and human potential, Michael Wayne explains the innate healing system within the human body and the new framework of science and medicine within which this becomes intelligible. The author is an acupuncturist with a PhD in the theme of this book, namely the science of emerging properties and its relationship to our innate healing system and to human potential more generally. The book begins with a quotation from the Albert Schweitzer to the effect that each patient carries his own doctor inside him and that the role of the physician is to activate the capacity of the inner doctor.

One of the strengths of the book is its clarity of exposition about the nature and implications of the current mechanistic medical model. This reaches its ultimate expression in evidence-based medicine (EBM) where the role of the computer replaces that of the physician. Clinical experience and judgement are rendered irrelevant and human interaction at the core of the healing experience is removed. The author shows that this view is incompatible with the latest developments in the sciences of quantum mechanics, complexity, chaos and systems theory, all of which he explains very clearly.

Instead of the biomedical model, the author proposes an interconnected medicine in which the role of mind and consciousness is central. The body is a self-organising and interconnected web of information rather than a complex biocomputer. He further argues that interconnectivity implies a complementary relationship between science and spirituality, rationality and intuition, art and science, biomedicine and alternative medicine in order to convey a more complete picture of reality. He then contextualises his argument within stages of development implied by the evolution of consciousness, illustrating this with models from Ken Wilber and spiral dynamics. His hypothesis is that of a self-organising principle moving life towards greater awareness and capacity. The linear deterministic model is replaced by a dynamic evolutionary process.

In a chapter entitled 'Towards a New Renaissance' the author proposes that creative emergence may be the trigger that turns on the mechanism of healing ... by emergence he means life constantly reaching out to create new life or new properties in response to the variables presented. Here the term renaissance needs questioning since Wayne equates it with a general flowering of capacity but without any historical reference to its meaning, especially with respect to the arts and not simply philosophy, science and medicine.

The final chapter engages with the further reaches of healing and human potential, citing extraordinary capacities as a pointer to the emergence of higher levels of existence. Wayne is surely correct in contending that there are facts to support the concept of an open-ended universe capable of self-organising to new levels of emergence, which in turn implies an expansion of worldview. In this connection his discussion of GšdelÕs incompleteness theory his highly illuminating.

Many readers will be familiar with much of the material presented here, but it is well put together and extensively referenced. It also has a glossary and the advantage of being concise. A similar argument is more extensively developed in Laurence Foss's book 'The End of Modern Medicine', which is not referenced here but which has much in common with Wayne. Foss presents a model of 'infomedicine' and a devastating critique of the underlying assumptions of modern biomedicine, especially the paradox implied by the coexistence of psychoneuroimmunology ('mind over matter') within a research framework of linear mechanistic determinism in which such a process is by definition impossible. In the long run, argues Foss, the assumption will have to be modified by the evidence base.

However, given the pervasive influence of EBM, the process may be slower than Wayne would like. The new scientific basis already exists, as is abundantly clear from this book. But molecular biology and biomedicine are still modelled on 19th century atomistic concepts that have long since been discarded by physics. Developmental and holistic biology have embraced the implications of quantum mechanics but they are not yet mainstream. Doctors and CAM practitioners can use this book to get up to speed and enhance their knowledge of philosophy of science as it relates to healing.

This review first appeared in Positive Health Magazine