[Updated] AI Chat: Are the domains of Hodges' model comparable?

In drafting a future post: 'The Sciences: points, lines, angles and perspectives on domains', I thought I would ask Ecosia's AI Chat a related question, here is the (quick) prompt and reply:

PROMPT: 
In Hodges' model there are four care, or knowledge domains. The four domains are the sciences, sociology, political, and intrapersonal – interpersonal domain. In terms of potential content are these domains comparable, or is there an essential asymmetry? Please provide sources and references.

(I have saved the prompt for future reference and refinement.)

RESPONSE: [updated 21st June 2026]

Hodges’ model (also known as the Health Career Model or h2cm) is a conceptual framework that organizes knowledge and care into four quadrants, each representing a distinct domain of human experience and knowledge. These domains are:

1. Sciences (empirical, biological, and physical sciences)
2. Sociology (social structures, relationships, and community)
3. Political (power, policy, governance, and resource allocation)
4. Intrapersonal – Interpersonal (psychological, emotional, and relational aspects of the self and others)

Are the Four Domains Comparable or Asymmetrical?

The four domains in Hodges’ model are not strictly symmetrical in terms of their content, scope, or application. While they are presented as equal in structure (each occupying one quadrant of the model), their potential content, theoretical foundations, and practical implications can vary significantly. Here’s why:

1. Differences in Scope and Focus

• Sciences (Quadrant 1):
  This quadrant focuses on empirical, measurable, and biological aspects of health and care, such as anatomy, physiology, and pathophysiology. Its content is often highly specialized, technical, and evidence-based, rooted in natural sciences like biology and chemistry.

  • Example: The role of hormones in stress response or the pathophysiology of diabetes.

• Sociology (Quadrant 2):
  This quadrant addresses social structures, culture, and community dynamics. Its content is broader and more interpretive, drawing from sociology, anthropology, and social psychology.

  • Example: The impact of socioeconomic status on health outcomes or the role of family support in recovery.

• Political (Quadrant 3):
  This quadrant examines power, policy, governance, and resource distribution. Its content is highly contextual and often contested, influenced by political science, economics, and public policy.

  • Example: The effect of healthcare policies on access to services or the role of advocacy in shaping health priorities.

• Intrapersonal – Interpersonal (Quadrant 4):
  This quadrant focuses on individual psychology, emotions, and relationships. Its content is highly subjective and variable, drawing from psychology, psychotherapy, and ethics.

  • Example: A patient’s personal beliefs about illness or the dynamics of a therapeutic relationship.

2. Differences in Methodology

• Sciences and Political domains often rely on quantitative methods (e.g., experiments, statistical analysis, policy evaluations).
• Sociology and Intrapersonal domains frequently use qualitative methods (e.g., interviews, case studies, ethnography).
• This methodological diversity can create asymmetry in how knowledge is generated, validated, and applied.

3. Differences in Practical Application

• Sciences and Political domains  are often system-level and influence macro-level decisions (e.g., clinical guidelines, healthcare policies).
• Sociology and Intrapersonal domains are more individual- or community-level, focusing on personalized care, cultural competence, and therapeutic relationships.
• This can lead to asymmetry in impact, where some domains (e.g., Political) shape broad systems, while others (e.g., Intrapersonal) focus on direct human experience.

4. Theoretical Foundations

• The Sciences and Political domains are grounded in positivist and structuralist theories, emphasizing objectivity and external reality.
• The Sociology and Intrapersonal domains are influenced by interpretivist and constructivist theories, emphasizing subjectivity and lived experience.
• This theoretical diversity can create asymmetry in how knowledge is perceived and valued in different contexts.

Is There an Essential Asymmetry?

Yes, there is an essential asymmetry in the potential content of the four domains. While the model presents them as equal in structure, their content, methods, applications, and theoretical foundations are not interchangeable. The domains complement each other but serve different purposes in understanding and delivering care.

Sources and References

1. Conceptual Overview of Hodges’ Model:

   • Hodges’ Model: A Cognitive Periplus for - WikiEducator (PDF)
   • Hodges’ Model: Welcome to the QUAD
   • Hodges’ Health Care Model as a Framework for Quality

2. Theoretical Foundations:

   • Hodges’ Health Career Model and its role and potential application
   • Hodges’ model: the Sustainable Development Goals and public health

3. Discussions on Asymmetry and Complementarity:

   • The model’s holistic intent is emphasized in Hodges’ Health Care Model as a Framework for Quality, but its quadrants are not identical in content or application.
   • The differences in methodology and scope are discussed in Hodges’ Health Career Model and its role and potential application.

Summary Table: Asymmetry in Hodges’ Model Domains

Domain	Content Focus	Methodology	Theoretical Foundation	Level of Application
Sciences	Biological, empirical data	Quantitative	Positivist	Macro (systems, clinical)
Sociology	Social structures, community	Qualitative/Quantitative	Interpretivist, Structuralist	Meso (groups, communities)
Political	Power, policy, governance	Quantitative/Qualitative	Structuralist, Critical Theory	Macro (systems, policy)
Intrapersonal-Interpersonal	Psychology, emotions, relationships	Qualitative	Constructivist, Humanistic	Micro (individual, relational)

PROMPT: 
In Hodges' model there are four care, or knowledge domains. The four domains are the sciences, sociology, political, and intrapersonal – interpersonal domain. In terms of potential content are these domains comparable, or is there an essential asymmetry?

 

In Hodges’ model, the four care (or knowledge) domains are:

1. Sciences (biological, physiological)
2. Sociology (social, cultural, environmental)
3. Political (legal, policy, organizational)
4. Intrapersonal – Interpersonal (psychological, emotional, relational)

These domains are not strictly comparable in terms of content, scope, or function. Instead, they represent complementary perspectives that together form a holistic framework for understanding human health, well-being, and care. Here’s why there is an essential asymmetry between them:

1. Scope and Focus

• Sciences and Sociology are broad, well-established academic disciplines with extensive theoretical and empirical foundations. They provide generalizable knowledge about biological processes and social systems.
• Political is more narrowly focused on power structures, governance, and resource allocation. While critical for systemic change, it is less about individual experience and more about collective frameworks.
• Intrapersonal – Interpersonal is deeply personal and subjective, focusing on individual psychology, emotions, and relationships. It is less about universal laws and more about unique, context-dependent experiences.

This makes the intrapersonal-interpersonal domain inherently asymmetrical compared to the others, as it deals with subjectivity and variability rather than objective or structural phenomena.

2. Epistemological Differences

• Sciences, Sociology, and Political domains rely on external observation, measurement, and analysis. They are rooted in positivist or structuralist traditions, where knowledge is often generalized.
• Intrapersonal – Interpersonal is rooted in interpretivist and phenomenological traditions, where knowledge is co-created through subjective experience and dialogue. It resists universal generalization.

This creates a fundamental asymmetry in how knowledge is produced and validated across the domains.

3. Practical Application in Care

• The Sciences, Sociology, and Political domains provide frameworks for action (e.g., medical treatments, social policies, legal rights). They are instrumental in shaping systems and interventions.
• The Intrapersonal – Interpersonal domain is transformative—it shapes how individuals perceive, interpret, and respond to care. It is the domain where meaning is made and agency is exercised.

This means the intrapersonal-interpersonal domain is not just another “content area” but a lens through which all other domains are experienced and integrated.

4. Hierarchy of Integration

While the domains are conceptually equal in Hodges’ model, in practice, the intrapersonal-interpersonal domain often acts as the nexus where the other domains intersect. For example:

• A scientific understanding of depression (e.g., serotonin levels) must be interpreted through the intrapersonal experience of the individual.
• A sociological analysis of healthcare disparities must be understood through the political structures that enable or inhibit change.
• A political decision about resource allocation must be filtered through intrapersonal values and priorities.

This integrative role makes the intrapersonal-interpersonal domain asymmetrical in function, even if not in formal status.

Conclusion: Essential Asymmetry

The four domains are not comparable in content or function. Instead:

• The Sciences, Sociology, and Political domains provide structural and systemic knowledge.
• The Intrapersonal – Interpersonal domain provides subjective and relational knowledge, which is essential for meaning-making and agency.

The asymmetry arises from the epistemological and practical differences between objective/systemic knowledge and subjective/experiential knowledge. Hodges’ model emphasizes that all domains are necessary, but they operate in fundamentally different ways.

The alchemy of terminology, symbols, and signs ...

Or, 'What is a nurse doing … in a chemistry class?' [Ack. See Estrada]

In reading, I was reminded that chemistry adopted mathematical symbols for its own use. Not only that, but as a core science (with physics and biology, emerging from natural philosophy) there is a historical development from the time of alchemy:

Please see (with a graphical abstract):

C.Wentrup, The Transition from Alchemical to Modern Chemical Symbolism: from Bergman and Guiton de Morveau to Hassenfratz and Adet, Higgins, Richter, Dalton, and Berzelius. ChemPlusChem. 2024, 89, e202400033. https://doi.org/10.1002/cplu.202400033

This journey matters today as the use of symbols, in mathematics or other fields can be a barrier to learning and hence personal and disciplinary progress:

Ollie Hunter. Lost in translation: Demystify scientific symbolic language to help your chemistry students overcome any potential learning barriers. Royal Society of Chemistry, 23 May 2022.

As acknowledged many times, it is easy to take a word, or concept from one discipline and 'fit' it to - or in another. Or is it? Estrada concludes:

“The complexities of modern science and modern society have created a need for scientific generalists, for men trained in many fields of science.” This is a paradigm of science in the XXI century, where the advent of such fields like the study of complex systems requires multidisciplinary approaches. But the previous phrase was not written in the XXI century. It is the starting sentence in The education of a scientific generalist” published in Science in 1949 (Bode et al. 1949).' p.161. 

'Mathematics has been defined as the science of patterns. Thus, mathematicians search for “numerical patterns, patterns of shape, patterns of motion, patterns of behavior, voting patterns in a population, patterns of repeating chance events, and so on” (Byers 2010). Once a pattern is identified either in chemistry or in mathematics, the researcher can proceed to the clarification of the systematic rule which is behind that pattern. This is evident in the analogy used here between code-breaking and structure elucidation. This attachment to patterns makes both chemists and mathematicians very prone to the use of pictures. An organic chemist hardly can say anything about the chemical reactivity (or any physical or chemical property) of a molecule from its exact quantum-mechanical Hamiltonian. However, she will construct a complete narrative about the physical and chemical properties of a molecular structure drawn in a piece of paper, even if such a molecule is completely imagined. The power of pictures in mathematics is discussed in the book Mathematics and the Unexpected by Ivar Ekeland (1990) where its value is recognized as fundamental in the early stages of the development of mathematical ideas. This also introduces a very important analogy among chemists and mathematicians. Namely, that they use a proper language in their respective fields. While physicists use the mathematical language in their investigations, chemists use the sophisticated language of chemical formulas and specific symbols to represent charges, rearrangements, partial equilibria, etc. These “invented” languages mainly appear only in Chemistry and in Mathematics, making them unique intellectual activities.' p.162.

With thanks to the author, Ernesto Estrada IFISC for additional thoughts and insights:

Estrada, E. What is a mathematician doing…in a chemistry class?. Found Chem 26, 141–166 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10698-023-09497-4

Lavoisier: Math - Chemistry; Quantity, Quality, Principle ...

The philosophy of science, can not avoid being viewed historically, which leads us to learn how mathematics literally took hold, from physics, to chemistry and biology. The application of mathematics to chemistry provides many and ongoing insights:

'Curiously enough, Kant’s own student, Jeremias Benjamin Richter (1762-1807), would only a few years later disprove his professor with his PhD dissertation On the use of the mathematical method in chemistry (Richter 1789). It laid the groundwork for stoichiometry as an algebraic approach to chemistry, including what was later called the ‘law of constant proportion’ that John Dalton used for his atomism on chemical grounds (Richter 1792-3, Dalton 1808). Moreover, at the time of Kant’s writing, experimental philosophy was taking over most of the centers of European research to become the mainstream methodology of modern science, which would later denounce the ideal of a priori knowledge in science as ‘mere’ metaphysics. Although some philosophers of mathematical physics still adhere to that ideal today, Kant was a late partisan in the struggle for the methodological priority of mathematics in the study of nature as it was exemplified by the old field of ‘rational mechanics’. Yet, his view on science became marginalized as much as his verdict on chemistry, that it would be alien to mathematics, was refuted.'

The pitfalls presented and Schummer's 2.4 A methodological suggestion for defining mathematical chemistry are helpful.

Joachim Schummer. Why Mathematical Chemistry Cannot Copy Mathematical Physics and How to Avoid the Imminent Epistemological Pitfalls. HYLE--International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry, Vol. 18, No.1 (2012). pp. 71-89. https://www.hyle.org/journal/issues/18-1/schummer.htm

Maths is filled with tragedy, but the personal manifestation in my lack of ability, pales to insignificance to the many scientific and human tragedies history reveals. Consider Galois, and Lavoisier:

‘Only a moment to cut off that head and a hundred years may not give us another like it,’ lamented the 18th-century French mathematician Joseph Louis Lagrange. The head in question had belonged to the French aristocrat and chemist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, who was executed at the hands of French revolutionaries on 8 May 1794. Lavoisier’s ideas changed the face of chemistry. He is best remembered for overthrowing the phlogiston theory, but perhaps his greater and more lasting achievement was to impose order on the language and symbolism that have shaped the thoughts of chemists.'

Paul Board, The Aristocrat who revolutionised chemistry, New Scientist. May 7, 1994 (Volume 142, Issue 1924). https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14219243-300/

In an essay in the Charles Coulston Gillispie's essay in the history of scientific ideas, Chapter VI. The Rationalization of Matter, describes how Lavoisier sought to develop an algebraic approach:

'But what is most interesting is Lavoisier's mode of representing these results, so correct in quantity, so wrong in principle. In order to sec what he was about, one has to follow him into some detail. It is obvious, he writes, that acidification of a metal involves many variables-heat, concentration, chemical affinities, etc. each of which is a force acting with characteristic energy. Therefrom results a problem complex and difficult of solution: [my emphasis]

"Better to exhibit the state of the question in this respect, and in order to show at a glance the result of what happens in metallic solutions, I have constructed formulas of a sort, which could at first be taken for algebraic formulas, but which have not the same object, and do not derive from the same principles . . ."'

Gillispie, Charles Coulston. The Edge of Objectivity: An Essay in the History of Scientific Ideas. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1960.

Gillispie quotes at length to demonstrate Lavoisier's approach*. There is a more accessible (for me, here) source in -

Stefano Zambelli (2012). Chemical Kinetics, an Historical Introduction, Chemical Kinetics, Dr Vivek Patel (Ed.), ISBN: 978-953-51-0132-1, InTech, Available from: 
http://www.intechopen.com/books/chemicalkinetics/chemical-kinetics-an-historical-introduction

Please see page 6: 3. Chemical equilibrium conception: The law of mass action.

To close, there is reading and advice to be carried forward in:

Guillermo Restrepo & José L. Villaveces, "Mathematical Thinking in Chemistry". Special Issue: Chemistry and Mathematics, Part 1. HYLE--International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry, Vol. 18, No.1 (2012). pp. 3-22. https://www.hyle.org/journal/issues/18-1/restrepo-villaveces.htm

Gillispie concludes his illustrated exploration of Lavoisier:

'Is this not the most tantalizing memoir in the history of chemistry, and in Lavoisier's the most appealing? Here alone, one gets a sense of modesty. He never claims for these expressions the dignity of algebra. "We are still very far from being able to introduce mathematical precision into chemistry, and I beg, therefore, that no one consider these formulas . . . as more than simple annotations, of which the object is to ease the labors of the mind." (But compare this disclaimer with what he says of algebra itself in the Method of Chemical Nomenclature: "Algebra is the analytical method par excellence: it was invented to facilitate the labors of the mind, to compress into a few lines what would take pages to discuss, and to lead, finally, in a more convenient prompt and certain manner to the solution of very complicated questions.")' p.245.

*in - Lavoisier, A.L. (1782). Considerations sur la dissolution des metaux dans les acides, Mémoires de l’Académie des sciences 1782, pp. 492-527, Available from http://www.lavoisier.cnrs.fr/ice/ice_book_detail-fr-text-lavosier-Lavoisier-49- 5.htm

Book: Bill Ross - 'Order and the Virtual' ii

'The Philosophy and Science of Deleuzian Cosmology'

Now I can say: "This year, Hodges' model will be presented at WCCS 6th World Conference on Complex Systems", so current reading needs to match this project. And, it does. In spades, in fact c/o and with thanks to Edinburgh University Press. Look at chapter 1! 'Chaos' with Mandelbrot fractals, smooth space drawing from Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus. For readers unfamiliar with the Deleuzian oeuvre, abbreviations of texts that feature in Bill Ross's book Order and the Virtual are listed (xii) and includes key sources by Michel Serres, Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead. This works as you mentally take a note, of work to lookup. Almost twenty years ago, I related some ideas of Michel Serres to Hodges' model:

Jones, P. (2008) Exploring Serres’ Atlas, Hodges’ Knowledge Domains and the Fusion of Informatics and Cultural Horizons, IN Kidd, T., Chen, I. (Eds.) Social Information Technology Connecting Society and Cultural Issues, Idea Group Publishing, Inc. Chap. 7, pp. 96-109. 

Ross discusses the extent and proximity of Deleuze's thought to chaos, complexity theory and science more generally as identified by commentators. Now up to chapter 4, it would have helped to have a look at the bibliography at the book's end. Deleuze saw how his work resonated with chaos theory. Steve Strogatz's book (now in a 3rd edition):

Strogatz, S.H. (2015) Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos: With Application to Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Engineering. 2^nd edition. Perseus Books Publishing, Cambridge. 

- explains in the introduction how 'home computing' contributed to the aesthetic appeal of fractals, which could display incredible patterns derived from seemingly simple mathematics. Even though, the programs often required many hours of running to deliver their results.

In the late 1980s I was fascinated with a subscription to Fractal Report:

https://stephen.shawweb.co.uk/Fractalreportindex.html

The relevance for me of Order and the Virtual is apparent on page 1, Deleuze and Guattari's thought having an immediate transdisciplinary application, crossing boundaries, and the creation of regions of bifurcation. Ross connects Deleuze's thought and Ilya Prigogine & Isabelle Stengers' text:

Order Out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature. London: Heinemann, 1984 

Ross is encouraging (to me and for Hodges' model), as he notes how the notions may be inexact, but they are nonetheless rigorous. Spanning as they do, philosophy, science - what is scientific(? - itself a boundary - demarcation) and artistic. I've often thought of Hodges' model as filled with folds, and multiple bifurcations. It looks like Bill Ross is going help me to isolate several, and possibly make my search more efficient (the latter really would assist). The memorial event held in Manchester last September was revalatory. Since the early 2000s I'd grown to  really appreciate the availability of books by Michel Serres. I was not aware of the force behind the Clinamen Press, which Bill Ross established in 1999. 'Clinamen' is a useful concept too, which I have encountered previously, through Serres and Lucretius. 

Readers new to philosophy, sociology and the development of ideas must often grapple with a new and specific vocabulary. This is a primary purpose of such texts. On page 2 the springboard is sprung, the Event is key in Deleuzian scholarship. The Event is a force for creative and disruptive force for thought,  idea generation and creativity. The Event is experienced in our current 'realities' of: time and space (Kronos) where things are actualised, and the virtual (Aion) - the pure Event. This lack of hesitation is welcome. Our 'virtual' world quickly provides access to reading:

parrhesia 27 · 2017 · 1-12
extract from the birth of physics
michel serres, translated by david webb, with an introduction by bill ross
https://parrhesiajournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/parrhesia27_serres.pdf

Where you have bifurcations, you have convergences and divergences, stasis, state - stasis or not, paths, a series and metrics. We are reminded that science is not just about theory - metaphysics, it is, sleeves rolled-up about doing too; as I've noted in subsequent reading. As 'chaos' predicts, there is no let up,  the Choasmos, quickly follows. I'm thinking of a 'situation' clinically as a rollercoaster - 'constant displacement' seeking a difference, and repetition, the ravages of alcohol, dementia, low mood, psychosis, obsession and compulsive 'states'. The chaosmos is central in Hodges' model, although as both continua and oppositions. Ross explains how Deleuze's chaosmos is not necessarily scientific, but belongs to the ancient cosmologies of the Greeks (p.3). I thought of flux here. 'Parity' is not just a physical metric, but a quality that acts, seeks resolution - equilibrium(?) - between the mental chaos and physical chaos.*

Thinkers like Deleuze 'trap' words, concepts, in boxes, drawing from other other sources (for chaosmos - with Guattari again); then they can be examined and tested for their scope, application, meaning and association. Hodges' model provides a trap, for any situation. Not as specific as a physicist's ion (or Penning) trap, but the model can act as a series of holistic traps. To provide a metric of holistic bandwidth.

*Of course, equilibrium is never found - until the 'End'; such is the nature of flux. 

More to follow...

Bill Ross (2024) Order and the Virtual: The Philosophy and Science of Deleuzian Cosmology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-order-and-the-virtual.html

Biology, axioms, teleology and knowledge c/o Cox & Forshaw (2012)

'Teleological ideas generally have a rather bad reputation in science, and it's easy to see why. In biology, a teleological explanation for the emergence of complex creatures would be tantamount to an argument for the existence of a designer, whereas Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection provides a simpler explanation that fits the available data beautifully. There is no teleological component to Darwin's theory - random mutations produce variations in organisms, and external pressures from the environment and other living thing determine which of these variations are passed on to the next generation. This process alone can account for the complexity we see in life on Earth today. In other words, there is no need for a grand plan and no gradual ascent of life towards some sort of perfection. Instead, the evolution of life is a random walk, generated by the imperfect copying of genes in a constantly shifting external environment. The Nobel-Prize-winning French biologist Jacques Monod went so far as to define a cornerstone of modern biology as "the systematic or axiomatic denial that scientific knowledge can be obtained on the basis of theories that involve, explicitly or not, a teleological principle".

As far as physics is concerned, there is no debate as to whether or not the least action principle actually works, for it allows calculations to be performed that correctly describe Nature and it is a cornerstone of physics. It can be argued that the least action principle is not teleological at all, but the debate is in any case neutralized once we have a grasp of Feynman's approach to quantum mechanics. The ball flying through the air 'knows' which path to choose because it actually, secretly, explores every possible path.' pp.52-53.

Cox, Brian, and Jeff Forshaw. (2012) Quantum Universe, the: Everything That Can Happen Does Happen. London: Penguin Books Ltd.

See also: 

Jacques Monod - https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/monod/

Harrison, Peter. 2022. 'The History of Science and Theology', St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology. Edited by Brendan N. Wolfe et al. https://www.saet.ac.uk/Christianity/TheHistoryofScienceandTheology

Greslehner GP. "Molecular Biology"- Pleonasm or Denotation for a Discipline of Its Own? Reflections on the Origins of Molecular Biology and Its Situation Today. Biomolecules. 2023 Oct 12;13(10):1511. doi: 10.3390/biom13101511. PMID: 37892193; PMCID: PMC10605324.

Previously: 'axiom' : 'biology' : 'corner'

Tongues: The Edinburgh Companion to the Global Medical Humanities

Editors: Benjamin Dalton (Lancaster University), Steven Wilson (Queen’s University Belfast), Alex Wragge-Morley (Lancaster) and Stephanie Wright (Lancaster)

NEW Deadline for abstracts: 30 January 2026

The deadline for proposals to participate in a new Edinburgh Companion to the Global Medical Humanities has been extended. Following on from the landmark Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities, this handbook aims to catalyse the emerging field of global, multilingual work in the medical humanities. In its earliest form, the medical humanities sought to recognize the importance of literature and the arts to medical education and communication. In the following decades, scholars have recognized the entanglements that have existed between mind, body and environment – entanglements that call into question still prevalent distinctions between the sciences and the humanities, or between biology and culture (Whitehead et. al., 2016). Now, scholars and practitioners are increasingly bringing global cultures, epistemologies, and languages to bear on the medical humanities. At the same time, new approaches that both challenge and extend the concerns of the medical humanities are emerging in non-Anglophone and non-Western contexts.

This volume will give students and scholars a comprehensive guide to the dynamic and emerging field of global medical humanities – identified as such in recent editorials in Medical Humanities, The Polyphony and The Routledge Handbook of the Medical Humanities. This is a field that engages critically with the notion of global studies, recognizing that some of its iterations simply perpetuate the cultural, epistemic, and cultural hierarchies that have so long dominated the fields of health and the humanities. At once synthesizing and developing the insights of the field, this Edinburgh Companion will deploy the metaphor of the tongue to bring together, without homogenizing, a globally diverse range of contexts and interconnections. The tongue is at once an instrument of speech and a bodily organ that connects people to their cultures and environments. Indeed, through its communicative function and the pleasures and pains of taste, the tongue relates people to the language and foodways frequently taken to define cultures and societies. Moreover, the tongue is an interface for pleasure, intimacy and connection between bodies. And, of course, the tongue quite literally brings the world into the body through acts of taste and eating (Mol, 2021).

On the one hand, therefore, this Companion will deal with language, exploring the manifold ways in which translation between cultural and linguistic contexts can change our understandings and experiences of health. But at the same time, taking its cue from the corporeality of the tongue, it will explore how thought, perception and bodily reality may alter or be altered by movement in and between cultural and linguistic settings. This new handbook will thus serve as a crucial resource for anybody engaging with the trans-cultural and trans-linguistic aspects of health and wellbeing, from scholars and students to medical practitioners and carers.

The handbook will include a foreword by Angela Woods (Durham University), and the editors invite proposals for chapters on any topic relating to the global medical humanities, including but not restricted to:

• Translating the medical humanities across cultures (broadly conceived)
• Vernaculars of healthcare
• Non-verbal languages
• Global conceptions or expressions of pleasure, sexuality, taste, and/or pain
• Bodies, senses and environments
• Failures of language to communicate pain and/or bodily resistance to translation

Abstracts of between 200-300 words should be sent along with a short (50-word max) bio to a.wragge-morley AT lancaster.ac.uk, b.dalton AT lancaster.ac.uk, s.wright9 AT lancaster.ac.uk and steven.wilson AT qub.ac.uk by 30 January 2026. Informal enquiries can be directed the same addresses.

My source: NNMHR list www.jiscmail.ac.uk/NNMHR

Health, planet, self: after - 'Can molecular Lego save the planet?'

Ack: © Johan Jarnestad /
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

'This morning’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry is one that’s been anticipated for several years now: it goes to Susumu Kitagawa of Kyoto, Richard Robson of Melbourne, and Omar Yaghi of Berkeley for metal-organic frameworks.'

'So what’s a MOF? This goes back to the idea of “coordination chemistry”, a huge topic in the inorganic and metal-organic fields.'

 

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Metal-Organic Frameworks 

Can conceptual Lego - 'human-metal organic frameworks' -
save healthcare, planetary and self-care?

'One astonishing characteristic is the amount of surface area locked away in these new materials: a MOF weighing one gramme can have an internal surface area the size of a football pitch^. MOFs are often likened to Hermione Granger's bottomless handbag in the Harry Potter books: a tiny exterior concealing a seemingly infinite interior. Rice University chemist Stavroula Alina Kampouri has called MOFs "magical sponges", describing them as "not just elegant crystals you'd admire under a microscope; they're an entire universe of structures, each like a miniature city of tunnels and rooms waiting to be filled."'

Anjana Ahuja, Can molecular Lego save the planet?, Opinion Science. Financial Times, 15 October 2025, p.22.

individual

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic -------------------------------------------  mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group-population

'This is not an ivory-tower sort of topic, though: the importance of these sorts of complexes cannot be overstated. They were the basis for the first Nobel awarded in inorganic chemistry (1913, Alfred Werner) and metal coordination is how the iron atoms in hemoglobin carry oxygen to the cells of your body to keep you alive, for starters. You can say the same thing about photosynthesis in plants, and about the actions of the many crucial enzymes in every living creature on the planet that have metal-ion centers in them. Outside of biology and biochemistry, the structures of minerals similarly cannot be understood without a knowledge of coordination chemistry.'

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Metal-Organic Frameworks

Popular information. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach 2025. Mon. 27 Oct 2025. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2025/popular-information/>

^Is this a question for BBC Radio 4 More or Less?

Of course, I keep posting about the Nobel Prize in the hope of a prize - due recognition for Hodges' model. Discretely of course, given a limited readership. 
Go figure: in 3D naturally.

HC@AIxIA AI&Health May Seminar: 'Building Trustworthy AI for Health'

Dear Madam/Sir,

This is to officially announce the MAY 2025 seminar of the "AI & Health: Seminars 2025" series as hosted by HC@AIxIA, i.e., the "Artificial Intelligence for Healthcare" working group of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence.

*** Save the date: 12 MAY 2025. 3:30 CET ***

We hope you will attend and participate in the discussion on the relevant topics that will be presented and by our speakers. Feel free to share this with those potentially interested.

Link for participating: https://bit.ly/hc-2025-05 (PLEASE CHECK the site https://aixia.it/en/gruppi/hc/ for any changes or updates) - Please find some details below, and a poster attached.

== May 2025 seminar ==
2025 May 12 - 3:30PM CET

Prof. Barbara Di Camillo, Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova, Italy

Title: Building Trustworthy AI for Health: Robust and Generalizable Models with a Focus on Challenging Cases

Abstract: To make artificial intelligence useful in real clinical settings, it is crucial that AI tools follow the principles of trustworthy AI. This means ensuring the accuracy and reliability of the results, defining the areas where the results are valid, and making sure the predictions are understandable. This approach ensures that humans remain at the center of the decision-making process. BRAINTEASER (https://brainteaser.health/) is a data science project that uses artificial intelligence to help patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and multiple sclerosis (MS), along with their doctors. In the presentation, I will show how, during the development of the machine learning methods within the project, we took into account the robustness and generalizability of the model, and how we identified and characterized the subjects for whom making predictions is more challenging.

Short Bio: Barbara Di Camillo is full professor in computer science with the Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova. Her research activity is centered in the development and application of advanced modeling, data mining and machine learning methods for high-throughput biological data analysis in the field of Bioinformatics and Systems Biology. In particular, she has developed and applied different methods for robust biomarker discovery, predictive modeling and clustering of clinical data and next generation sequencing data. She has also a great expertise in the development and application of differential equation based models, Boolean and Bayesian Networks for modeling the relationships between the variables and the pathways along which they influence the disease progression.

Flyer: https://drive.google.com/open?id=15badJ0Nfj8lrA0gZdFc9aOGeR3pelms-&usp=drive_fs

====

Some notes
Serving as coordinators of the working group on AI for Healthcare of the Italian Association of Artificial Intelligence (AIxIA, see: https://aixia.it/en/gruppi/hc/), part of our commitment consists of fostering contamination and collaboration between AI researchers and experts and operators in Medicine and Healthcare; in particular, we aim to contribute in building a two-way road for informing healthcare operators about AI results and opportunities, while also raising awareness among AI researchers about challenges and problems in medicine and healthcare.
Therefore, the 2025 seminar series, in the trail of the 2024 edition, will feature a number of experts presenting research results, projects, best practices, ideas, and more to a mixed audience of AI researchers and healthcare operators.

Thank you for your interest in the AI & Health seminar series and the HC@AIxIA working group, and see you soon!

Sincerely,
Francesco Calimeri, Mauro Dragoni, Fabio Stella
(coordinators of the HC@AIxIA working group)

Book review: #4 - Handbook on the Ethics of AI

Chapter 7 is no doubt one of the engine rooms of this book. In AI Ethics and Machine Ethics, John-Stewart Gordon follows preceding authors citing Nyholm and others. This probably helps the overall coherence of the book, and underlines what is a dynamic and emerging field. Reading 'What is AI ethics?' (p.98), I made a note about our humanity's cognitive house-keeping (and other life-forms?) executed through sleep, the ability to unlearn, and forget. Efforts to mitigate machine bias are provided in a list 1-5 (p.100). As observed previously, this author is also thinking on their feet (and very well too) with 'Source: Author's own' in a figure for the systemic place of machine ethics and another (table) 7.1 'Four approaches to machine ethics'.

3.4 considers the challenges involved in developing ethical AI systems. As in healthcare, we see where the (problem of) 'many hands' emerges from:

'Developing ethical AI systems requires collaboration between computer scientists, ethicists, and other stakeholders, which can be challenging due to differences in expertise, terminology, and perspectives. Computer scientists bring technical expertise to the table, while ethicists provide insights on moral principles and values that should guide AI behavior. However, these experts often operate within their own domains and may lack a common language to effectively communicate and collaborate. 

Other stakeholders, such as policymakers, industry professionals, and end-users, also play vital roles in shaping the ethical development of AI systems. They bring diverse perspectives, needs and expectations that need to be considered and balanced during the design, implementation, and regulation of AI technologies. For instance, policymakers are responsible for creating guidelines and regulations that ensure the safe and responsible use of AI, while industry professionals must adhere to these standards and navigate the practical challenges of integrating ethical considerations into their AI-driven products and services.' p.104.

The solution includes having interdisciplinary and ethnically diverse teams, cross-disciplinary training, and a more holistic and comprehensive approach to AI development. Unintended consequences (a news item today (13th Feb 2025) are discussed, the dual-use nature of AI and technological 'delivery' surveillance acting for good and potentially ill (China's - Social Credit Point System).

AI ethics is also itself apparently a conceptual framework (p. 99,107).

What is permitted by law in a State clearly varies. Chapter 8 deals with From Ethics to Law: Why, When, and How to Regulate AI. Collingridge is another recurring citation, and presents a dilemma no-less (Section 3. p.116); one to follow up  (Coeckelbergh too, chap 9). I've always felt that some knowledge of social and economic history is a good foundation. History is reflected here in resort to 'masterly inactivity' (p.118) and regulatory approaches - as debated this past week at an AI Action Summit in France. 

I can still recall the sense of competition in having time in the sandpit at infants school.* Software developers will use sandboxes to develop and revise code in an isolated environment, before it goes live, or wild. With AI the book refers to mishaps, projects that have gone wrong. We need to take care regards the nature of the 'sandboxes' that are used. In a way this speaks to the utility of Hodges' model as a resource for lifelong learning, a learner being fully socialised into a profession and its evolving disciplines:

INDIVIDUAL

|

      INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC  --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

 SOCIOLOGY  :    POLITICAL 

|

GROUP

box	sand-
box	box

I had to look up the CREEPER (Curbing Realistic Exploitative Electronic Pedophilic Robots) ACT (p.121). We are accustomed to outsourcing, and its perverse effects facilitated through globalisation, with nations transferring their pollution - plastics, and e-wastes. There are efforts as Chesterman writes to limit outsourcing to AI in terms of the decisions (pp.122-123). I enjoyed the nods to Isaac Asimov too. 

Gellers in chapter 9 AI, Design, and More-than-Human Justice provides another cylinder to drive the text not just forward but acknowledges the future for all: organic and inorganic. Gellers is argues for attention to AI and justice, not merely the moral and legal status of AI. Reading of  'communities of justice' (p.128) the established notion of 'communities of practice' or the collective of users - socio-technically. Gellers highlights our being in the anthropocene and how the environment and nature is figuring in law. So, not just legal questions for humans but natural 'things' and entities also (posted previously: Person & Sense of Place: A River runs through it ...).

INDIVIDUAL

|

      INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC  --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

 SOCIOLOGY  :    POLITICAL 

|

GROUP

person- [what >] 'Who'	-hood (p.129) algorithmic
collective communities of practice	justice communities of justice

I don't think we are there yet? Even, accepting that built-in obsolescence is an established and legal thing. But AI could turn materialism on its head. Looking at the materials, metals, rare earth elements ... that goes in how long do they last and how are the materials recovered? AI, computing desperately needs the doughnut economy, must epitomize the doughnut. Looking for a place to live, you notice the way probably quite serviceable bathrooms and kitchens are ripped out. The suites on a skip. That is quite a scene on the rubbish tip in the film: 'A.I. Artificial Intelligence'. The amount of energy in total production and materials is still not wholly valued, even before other values are 'added'? The focus on design here is integral to such questions. It has brought me to care design, and care architecture. Socio-technical aspects are highlighted again by Gellers (for me, as noted on W2tQ, that hyphen matters). 

Unsurprisingly, Descartes also figures in this chapter, section -Technology in the anthropocene:

'First, for philosophers of technology, the Anthropocene obliterates the nature/culture divide intrinsic to Cartesian thinking (Conty, 2017) that altered the course of history by rebranding technical objects as artificial and thus divorced from nature (Hui, 2017).' p.131.

It is encouraging that there is now recognition that 'we are nature too'. While we can record thought - brain activity on an EEG, from the outset (school studies of biology, then human biology) I've always associated intelligence, mind, thought, emotion, hope, dreams and cognition .. with the intra- interpersonal domain. If you adopt a socio-technical approach (overview - mindset) then invariably the technosphere will straddle the HUMANISTIC <-> MECHANISTIC axis of Hodges' model:

'So far, I hope to have established that technology plays a prominent, if complicated, role in the Anthropocene. But how does this relate to justice? Technology's relationship to ecological systems holds important implications for determining who belongs to communities of justice. To begin, the Earth system consists of interrelated biological, physical, and mental "worlds" (Kotzé, 2020, p. 80). The mental world, also referred to as the "technosphere," is an autonomous amalgamation of energy, communication, transportation, and financial systems, along with cities, governments, factories, farms, and other built systems and their constituent parts (Haff, 2014, P. 127). Technological artifacts such as AI are therefore part of the technosphere.' p.132.

Hodges' model: axes and care domains

We read of robots-in-ecology and robots-for-ecology. I was reminded of the SF film 'Silent Running' here. The real merit and encouragement for me in Geller's contribution, is section 4 which compares how we can approach more-than-human justice. Total eclipses are supposed to be rare, irrespective of what they might portend, now AI, the climate and life on Earth keep eclipsing each other: thus far partially. 4.1 Multispecies justice - Peter Singer really is ahead of his time (chapter 11 - here!); following socio-ecological justice 4.2, we arrive at planetary justice. Note (in Hodges' model) the 'distance' of what is generally deemed social and where the ecological in reality - physically resides. In the margin I'd scribbled 'Less a case of "take me to your leader" and more a case of "show me all your cards!"'. The synthesis and closing section on the design of robots specifically for more-than-human-justice helps here by including relationality, intersectionality and and contexts. 'Design justice' is something the book prompts me to carry forward (p.137).

Handbook on the Ethics of AI

One final post on HEoAI to follow ...

Handbook on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. David J. Gunkel (ed.). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978 1 80392 671 1245
https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/handbook-on-the-ethics-of-artificial-intelligence-9781803926711.html

Book review: Handbook on the Ethics of AI #1

Book review: Handbook on the Ethics of AI #2

Book review #3: Handbook on the Ethics of AI

Related previous posts: 'general + AI'

*That early streak of competitiveness was clearly educated out of me.

"AI & Health: Seminars 2025" - Current topics in AI in medicine and health informatics ...

Dear Madam/Sir,

This is to officially announce the FIRST seminar of the "AI & Health: Seminars 2025" series as hosted by HC@AIxIA, i.e., the "Artificial Intelligence for Healthcare" working group of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence.

*** Save the date: 22 JANUARY 2025. 3:30 CET ***

We hope you will attend and participate in the discussion on the relevant topics that will be presented and by our speakers. Feel free to share this with those potentially interested.

Please find some details below, and a poster attached. All directions for participating are available at https://aixia.it/en/gruppi/hc/.

2024 January 22 - 3:30PM CET

Mor Peleg, PhD, Professor of Information Systems, University of Haifa (HAifa, Israel), EIC of Journal of Biomedical Informatics

Title: 
Current topics in AI in medicine and health informatics: 
current challenges and a look ahead

Abstract: In this talk I will review current challenges, current work by the biomedical informatics community, and future topics related to AI. I draw the information from a paper[1] that a group of informatics editors and other respected members of the community co-authored and published in 2023 in the Journal of Healthcare Informatics Research. There, we identified focus areas that should be addressed in the next ten years, specifically learning from new challenges that emerged in the Covid-19 epidemic. I will also present my analysis of current and emerging topics of papers published in the Journal of Biomedical Informatics (JBI) in the past two years, and current calls for special issue papers. I will also touch upon the role of international collaboration in emerging research areas (in JBI).

[1] Combi C, Facelli JC, Haddawy P, Holmes JH, Koch S, Liu H, Meyer J, Peleg M, Pozzi G, Stiglic G, Veltri P. The IHI Rochester report 2022 on healthcare informatics research: Resuming after the covid-19. Journal of healthcare informatics research. 2023 Jun;7(2):169-202.

Short Bio: Mor Peleg is Full Professor of information systems and Founding Director of the University of Haifa’s Data Science Research Center, former Chair of the Data Science BSc program of the University of Haifa, and former Chair of the Department of Information Systems. She is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Biomedical Informatics, which focuses on novel biomedical informatics methods. Mor's BSc and MSc degrees in biology and her PhD in Information Systems – are from the Technion -- Israel Institute of Technology, and her 4-year postdoc was at Stanford University's Center for Biomedical Informatics Research. Mor’s research focuses on clinical guideline-based decision support systems (CDSS) for patients and physicians. She led the large-scale European project MobiGuide and was a PI in the CAncer PAtients Better Life Experience ( CAPABLE project https://capable-project.eu/). There she uses machine learning methods to personalize triggers for health behavior change, utilizing behavioral theories. Web-site: https://mpeleg.hevra.haifa.ac.il/

Flyer: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pYIdbkk63mS52wRbOiiEpwaDJmsraZJL&usp=drive_fs

Link to participate: https://unimib.webex.com/unimib/j.php?MTID=m8e6e76b39cc5aa47f15922dddb167a25

(PLEASE CHECK the site https://aixia.it/en/gruppi/hc/ for any changes or updates)
====
Some notes
Serving as coordinators of the working group on AI for Healthcare of the Italian Association of Artificial Intelligence (AIxIA, see: https://aixia.it/en/gruppi/hc/), part of our commitment consists of fostering contamination and collaboration between AI researchers and experts and operators in Medicine and Healthcare; in particular, we aim to contribute in building a two-way road for informing healthcare operators about AI results and opportunities, while also raising awareness among AI researchers about challenges and problems in medicine and healthcare.
Therefore, the 2025 seminar series, in the trail of the 2024 edition, will feature a number of experts presenting research results, projects, best practices, ideas, and more to a mixed audience of AI researchers and healthcare operators.

== Are you interested in Joining the group? ==
Please head to https://aixia.it/en/gruppi/hc/ fo find out how. Do not hesitate to contact us at
  hc-aixia AT googlegroups.com for any information or clarification.

Thank you for your interest in the AI & Health seminar series and the HC@AIxIA working group, and see you soon!

Sincerely,
Francesco Calimeri, Mauro Dragoni, Fabio Stella
(coordinators of the HC@AIxIA working group)
(and my source)