Workshop IV: An International Workshop on
Life, disease and death in western and eastern history of ideas and medicine

Date: 11 June 2004
Venue: Needham Research Institute,
Cambridge, UK

The issue of Life and death has been the central concern of human beings throughout all ages and all cultures. Diseases, which threaten the very existence of human beings, have been one of the most important topics within this issue. Every culture, or cultural tradition, has theories, images and detailed stories concerning life, disease and death, as well as activities, or methods, by which people try to make their lives better, and which can be called "medicine". These ideas and activities are in part trans-cultural and in part peculiar to one culture. Thus, the issue "life, disease and death" is certain to be a most productive subject for examination when scholars specializing in the history of ideas or medicine from different cultures get together.

On this occasion, as one of the workshops under the Tohoku-Cambridge Forum, scholars specializing in the history of ideas from Japan meet scholars in the field of the history of science and medicine in the United Kingdom at the Needham Research Institute, the western center for the study of the history of East Asian science, technology and medicine. Together they will examine specific topics within this general subject from the perspectives of western and eastern cultures, trying to distinguish which aspects are trans-cultural and which are culture-bound. Such a fruitful meeting of minds is certain to improve our understanding of the nature of human beings and their struggle with these fundamental issues.