Ciencia y cultura en la construcción del pensamiento enfermerode la filosofía clásica a los estudios culturales

Abstract

Science and culture are two terms of great relevance for all the disciplines that deal with the health-disease binomial and also for nursing. The way in which science and culture have been integrated in nursing’s history has conditioned the construction of nursing thought. The aim of this paper is to review the contributions of some classical and contemporary authors to the debate between science and culture in nursing philosophy. Plato, Xenophon, Leo Strauss and Michel de Certeau are the selected authors. The research method has been the documentary analysis of the sources and their contrast with recent nursing publications. The results achieved point to basic aspects of the interaction between science and culture in nursing such as: the way in which the social place of nursing conditions what is considered nursing science; the contrast between the practical and the theoretical way of accessing knowledge; the need to question established knowledge during the training of new nurses; and the process of assuming philosophical postulates in nursing research through the incorporation of the premises of contemporary thinkers, such as Heidegger and Gadamer. Thus, it is possible to conclude that the history of philosophy, through the critical reading of the works of the authors studied, allows us to address the question of the notions of science and culture in nursing. And, in particular, to reflect on the position which, in the current general framework of the hegemony of the scientific paradigm, corresponds to the idea of culture in the construction of nursing thought. Keywords Nursing, thought, science, culture, Xenophon, Plato, Leo Strauss, Certeau.