This laboratory is name after Galen (ca. 129-206 C.E.), a Greek
physician.
He represents a capstone on a tradition of medicine established by Hippocrates
that was eventually passed on to Renassiance scholars. He is known for
his meticulous observation and empirical work. In other words, his
scientific approach to medicine. For these reasons, this group has
been named the Galen Lab. We seek to use a scientific, empirically-based
approach to software engineering, in building and validating
software tools and methods, and our concern with research methdology.
Incidentally, Galen is the name of the the
digital library at University of California, San Diego,
a think tank on health and tax
policy,
and medical informatics software
funded by the EU.
Background
Here is a story about Galen that is cited in an introductory text on
research methdology (Ray, 1993, p. 11) that is used to illustrate his
scientific approach.
"In the second century A.D., Galen, a well-known physician, described a
woman who complained of insomnia (Mesulam and Perry, 1972). The problem
was to determine the factors that led to the insomnia. Galen first
decided
that the problem was not mainly physical. Following this determination,
he
began to notice the woman's condition during his examinations. It
happened
that during one examination, a person returning from the theater
mentioned
the name of a certain dander, Pylades. At this point Galen observed that
the woman's pulse increased along with a change in her facial color
and expression. What did Galen do next? To answer his questions as to
what was affecting the women, he began to experiment. In his own words:
"The next day, I told one of my following that when I went to visit
the woman he was to arrive a little later and mention than Morphus
was dancing that day. When this was done the patient's pulse in no
way changed. And likewise, on the following day, while I was attending
her, the name of the third dancer was mentioned, and in like fashion
the pulse was hardly affected at all. I investigated the matter for
a fourth time in the evening. Studying the pulse and seeing that it
was excited and irregular when mention was made that Pylades was
dancing,
I concluded that the lady was in love with Pylades, and in the days
following, this conclusion was confirmed exactly. (Galen, 1827,
trans)
"Galen went pas observation and began to ask, "I wonder what will happen
if I do this?" He performed what would now call a single-subject
experiment. Notice that Galen checked to determine that it was not
the name of just any dancer that produced a change in pulse rate or even
just a man's name. He sought to discover what factors brought on an
irregular pulse by examining a number of alternatives. From this
investigation, he concluded that only the name of one particular man,
repeated on different occasions, produced the effect."
Links and References
-
University of Virginia Health System page on Galen
- Galen: A
Biographical
Sketch
- Galen. (1827) De praenotione. In D.C.G. Kuhn (Ed.) , Opera
omnia
cap. vi (Vol. 9, pp. 630-635). Lipsae: Officina Libraria Car.
Cnoblochii.
- M. Mesulam and J. Perry. (1972). The diagnosis of love-sickness:
Experimental
psychphysiology without the polygraph. Psychophysiology,
9,
546-551.
- William J. Ray. (1993) Methods Toward a Science of Behavior and
Experience of
Behavior and Experience, Fourth Edition, Brooks/Cole
Publishing Company,
Pacific Grove, California.
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