Medicine is not a pure, fundamental scientific discipline. In the same way that a mechanic (or engineer) applies (or uses) the ideas of physics to solve problems, a medical doctor “solves” the problems of the human body by using the knowledge from the fundamental scientific disciplines.
Applied science is the application of existing scientific knowledge to practical applications, like technology, inventions, & medical treatments. This includes a broad range of applied science related fields from engineering, business, medicine to early childhood education.
From a "natural science perspective", medicine is to considerable extent an applied science. However, medical research can't be clearly separated from fundamental research in other fields. In my experience, many MD do not count themselves among natural scientists. At the same time they emphasize the importance of interpersonal competence for medical practitioners.
I would say that medicine is an art more than an applied science. It is the art of deduction and beyond all else endeavour. I think as a Doctor to say medicine is just applying scientific principles is disheartening as what we find is patients do not present as they should , that there is a beautiful overlap between conditions and that some of the best ideas and innovations in medicine have come from dreams and imagination alone.
Tham, i think we are on the same page of thought and common sense reasoning. This is because I understand 'science' as the discovery of natural existing phenomenons but the application of knowledge gained from the study of such phenomenons to produce something usable to address man's area of need is what gave birth to technology. However, technology is combination of both artistic ideas and scientific principles to achieve a functional product. This is because the basic knowledge of science as can be transformed to achieve technological ends cannot satisfy man's sense of appreciation, until art comes into play. In medicine, having knowledge of a particular ailment like brain tumor, it effects to the body, and knowing that a brain tumor can be carefully removed to eliminate malfunction of a human body without damaging the organism is pure science. With the aid of surgical equipment (which are pure products of technology) to resolve the ailment through operation is combination of both scientific and technological knowledge. The design (shape, size, form, etc) of the surgical equipment is where art comes in. This means that, medicine is not just the application of scientific knowledge alone but also the employment of both art and technological means to resolve health problems. In whichever way one chooses to view it, knowledge has been applied in the same way mechanics or engineers and some other professionals do.
Medicine is based on science, on biology, on chemistry, etc. There are also medical sciences, looking into health issues from a strictly scientific perspective (e.g. environmental health science, pharmacology, reproductive health science, etc.)
Much of medical diagnosis and prognosis is an art in the sense of being a skill that is acquired and honed through practical experience. There are practical rules of thumb but there are no simple recipes for inference that always lead directly from observations to diagnostic or prognostic conclusions. Diseases may paradigmatically display certain symptoms, but not all occurrences of a disease are paradigmatic; sometimes the disease doesn't manifest the symptoms commonly associated with it, sometimes the symptoms are manifested in the absence of the commonly associated disease. A physician also needs to have the communicative and interpretative skills to properly elicit and evaluate a patient's self-reports and this in turn may require knowledge of the patient's history, temperament, personality, etc. Much of this is intuitive insofar as the underlying inferential processes for the judgements involved can't be fully articulated.
Medicine is both a science and an art, and the science in medicine may be theoretical, as well as practical or applied.
Medicine clearly is an Art and is based and uses many sciences...
Therefore it is an applied science, agreed...
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