فلسفة علم الأوبئة عند أليكس برودبنت: المنظور التفسيري التقابلي للاستدلال العلي

Abstract EN

Epidemiology is one of the basic sciences of public health whose goal is to improve public health by generating data for successful health policies decision-making.

epidemiologists are interested in extrapolating certain groups of the studied populations and extending the causal claim to all the unstudied ones, in other words moving from a correlation (such as a statement that smoking causes lung cancer) to a general causal claim.

in practice, however, it has been discovered that these epidemiological hypotheses have clear exceptions, and these statistical generalizations are no longer universal, but they are merely measures of the strength of the correlation or the proportions of specific risk factors.

hence, epidemiology's correlations (often in the form of quantitative statements about difference-making relationships) place researchers between the rock of the statistical statement that it is not causal and not guaranteed and the hard place of the importance of being a pivotal piece of evidence for establishing causal relationships.

this study aims to rephrase the question that has preoccupied philosophers of causality in epidemiology since the probabilistic shift during the 1960s and 1970s: to what extent and under what circumstances can one infer causal claims from correlations? philosophers of science began studying epidemiological issues a few years ago, and Alex Broadbent's writings are among the first comprehensive constructive critical views of epidemiology based on the philosophy of science.

his writings addressed various topics the theme of which is the topic of causation to a large extent.

this study relies on a critical review of Broadbent's suggestion of redirecting the attention away from causality and toward explanation from a contrastive explanatory perspective that emphasizes stability and predictability.

the study emphasizes the importance of Broadbent's perspective in providing epidemiologists with a critical perception of their concepts and hypotheses, providing philosophers of science with a detailed consensual view of the important problems of one of the most significant health sciences, and encouraging them to contribute to its philosophy.