Thinking straight about disease

It is not really correct to say that someone “has” or “got” covd, influenza, a cold, pneumonia, diabetes, measles, chicken pox, bronchitis, or any other of the multiplicity of “diseases”, which people are taught to fear. What they actually have are “symptoms”: temperature, coughing, sneezing, shivers, headache, growths, eruptions etc. - these are real phenomena which everyone has observed and/or experienced, but “influenza”, “a cold”, “measles” etc are just abstractions. Where are they? Has anyone ever seen, heard, felt or experienced any of them, apart from through their “symptoms”? At the most, these words can be used to give an idea of what range of phenomena an individual is experiencing. But the step from that to giving “diseases” a concrete ontological existence of their own and moreover attributing to them an active and malevolent nature (which, if you think about it, is how most people are brought up to see them) is enormous and indefensible. It is a transgression of a fundamental law of human thought known as Occam’s Razor or the Law of Parsimony, which states that "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity". The more abstract entities postulated in an intellectual model, the more unwieldy it becomes, and the less likely it is that it provides a reliable framework for understanding reality.

In the case of the philosophy of health, a better interpretation of “symptoms” has long been available, but powerful vested interests have done and continue to do everything in their power to keep its simple truth from illuminating the minds of the masses. The extraordinary bodily phenomena we experience in sickness are in fact:

• the product of one benevolent vital energy which acts to maximise the vitality of the organism, 
• and NOT (as is widely assumed) the effects of one or more of a growing multitude of invisible and malevolent powers working towards disorder and death. 

The word "symptom" actually implies the connection with these mysterious aggressive forces, so these phenomena are better described using Shelton’s term “biogony” (from the Greek, bios - life, and agonizo -struggle). Biogonies are not to be suppressed but rather allowed, as far as possible, to run their course. If we don't want to experience these phenomena or at least we'd like to minimise the extent to which we do, we need to think ahead, maximising the healthiness of our lifestyle and environment, avoiding toxins (including medicines) and enervating habits and influences.