Blurring boundaries or structural coupling? Revisiting the science-medicine interface through the analogy of politics and law
Dominik Hofmann · 2026
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Description
Dominik Hofmann argues, in a 2026 theory article, that talk of blurring borders between science and medicine misreads how the two systems actually touch. Writing in the tradition of Niklas Luhmann, Hofmann treats each as a closed system with its own code: science trades in truth, medicine in health and illness. Contact between them is structural coupling, a stable pattern of irritation, not a merger.
The comparison case is law and politics, whose coupling theory already describes well. Both pairs, the article shows, push justification outward: each system lets the other carry the burden of legitimating hard choices. Medicine handed that burden to science as the two grew up together over centuries. Today's frictions, from gene editing to AI diagnosis, then read as strain on an old coupling under faster innovation. The blurring metaphor, Hofmann concludes, mistakes heavier traffic for a vanished border.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Dominik Hofmann |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 71 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |