1 result for (book:deavf1 AND heading:"essay 8 sunday may 23 1982" AND stemmed:evid)
[... 14 paragraphs ...]
I even think there’s good medical evidence these days for my view of Jane’s “symptoms,” as we’ve called them for many years. In recent years rheumatoid arthritis has been found to be an amazingly complicated disease involving a great number of the body’s immune factors. In the progression of rheumatoid arthritis one’s own immunologic system turns on the body and damages it. A very simplified explanation is that in a process repeated over and over, a variety of defender cells called phagocytic monocytes turn into macrophages, or scavenger cells that, in turn, release enzymes which consume healthy joint tissue. The resulting debris attracts more monocytes, and so on. An inflammatory accumulation of cellular detritus finally destroys the joint’s cartilage and eats away bone.
[... 12 paragraphs ...]
Because of its very nature, however, and even though it comprises enough “evidence” in favor of a generalized principle that explains the workings of certain phenomena, a theory inevitably contains errors, since it’s based upon incomplete data to begin with. It’s therefore vulnerable to later theories through which investigators attempt to reduce or eliminate those errors. A continuous refining of detail takes place in the search for a final truth that can become “fact.” (I also note that that truth being sought may end up as so abstract a quality that it loses its emotional and intellectual meanings for us, and moves out of our generalized perception. I’m noting, then, that we can analyze something right out of our own reality by ultimately declaring it to be impossible—when actually it, and other versions of it, continue to exist in related probable realities.)
[... 2 paragraphs ...]