An emerging theory of health as unified coherence

Although there are a plethora of theories of health, today a general consensus on the definition and etiology of health and disease does not yet exist. This dissertation analyzes the major theories of health presented from the perspectives of the philosophy of medicine, the biological sciences, nursing, and indigenous medicine; all of which are framed within Stephen Pepper's worldview hypothesis and Jean Gebser's structures of consciousness. Upon discovering that existing theories of health do not answer the question, "Why are some people healthy while others are sick," I embarked on constructing a theory of health for that purpose. Utilizing Robert Silverman's fourth dimensional perspective of the individual, which appreciates how individuals are inventive in relation to issues in their lives, the question was answered. A combined methodology of Dennis Mithaug's four-step strategy for constructing theory and Peter Jarvis' developing theory from practice was utilized along with personal intuition developed from a quarter century of work in healthcare. The emerging theory of health as unified coherence follows the principles of holism and identifies discrepancies in likeness and collaboration of an individual's body, mind, and spirit as the etiological factors associated with health and disease.;Keywords: health, theory of health, human development, philosophy of medicine, complementary and alternative medicine, developmental psychology, theory, medicine, body-mind-spirit...