Health, knowledge and identity: A search for the definition of human health

This is an investigation of idea of health. There are two central sets of findings; those related to the nature of health itself as an absolute principle, and those related to the mechanism of the adoption of health beliefs by individuals. These two sets of findings are briefly outlined in sequence below.;An absolute principle of the idea of health is contained within a discussion of "wholeness". All discussion of health involves consideration of the nature of personhood and the body. The body must be defined as a biophysical system. Health refers to human potential. Health is therefore a property that exits independently of both illness and disease. The realization of health is a realization of potential, a cultivation of capacities leading to a set of abilities or virtues. These capacities include those of self-organization, knowledge creation, self-referential organization and symbolic representation. Individuals participate in a socially iterative relationship with the larger community unit, which in turn is a component of a planetary biological macrosystem. Individual health is linked inextricably to population and ecological fitness.;The mechanism of health belief adoption is related to the recurrent them of "achieving health". Achieving health is achieving a particular state of personhood, or identity. There are two sets of factors which influence how a particular definition of a "healthy identity" is selected by an individual; those involving health beliefs, and those involving the experience of health. Our interpretation of the events of our body is conditioned by prior beliefs about the world which are presupposed, and represent an admixture of cultural and personal explanations of human wholeness. There is a culturally located definition of health which we compare ourselves to in an act of self-appraisal. Our response to recognition of dissonance between the cultural image and our self-appraisal is health-seeking behaviour. Health ideas within the Western civilization are the outcome of Christian metaphysics and are recently, scientific medicine. Our beliefs about health are social products, and we act upon them as they come to represent indisputable reality which in turn, determine the form of delivery health care.;Different cultures come to define health on the basis of their metaphysical presuppositions. Using a counter-system analysis of traditional Chinese medicine and scientific medicine, it is shown that "Eastern" verses "Western" views of the body, and thereby health, have come to exist, leading each civilization to derive entirely different explanations for physical and mental well-being.;Well being and life satisfaction measurement is our best current measure of health as a biological property. Social and health planning must be based on enabling people to achieve their potential, by allowing for the realization of population well-being. Population health is expected to correlate positively with the rate of information transfer and national levels of higher education; implications for higher education are discussed.