Immunology of the “sensible world” and of the “intelligible world”: the evolutionary decline and the “constructed reality”
- Authors: Goloviznin M.V.1, Moiseev V.I.1, Timofeev V.T.2, Lakhonina N.S.1, Buldakova Y.R.1
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Affiliations:
- Russian University of Medicine
- N. Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University
- Issue: Vol 27, No 2 (2024)
- Pages: 397-402
- Section: SHORT COMMUNICATIONS
- URL: https://journals.rcsi.science/1028-7221/article/view/263705
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.46235/1028-7221-16874-IOS
- ID: 263705
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Abstract
The term “immunity” was introduced in medicine due to Ilya Mechnikov. However, the concept of infection resistance existed in European culture long before Mechnikov in the form of s.c. “vital force”. According to holistic methodology, the history of immunology can be divided into three unequal periods: 1) vitalistic – from antiquity to the discoveries of Mechnikov and Ehrlich; 2) “Mechnikov time” (1890s – 1916); and 3) a post-Mechnikov period (1916 – present). At the beginning of 18th century, the existence of “vital force” ideas created the possibility to adapt variolation in Europe, which was based on medieval magical-mystical concepts. Without generalizing of variolation experience, Edward Jenner would hardly have been able to discover vaccination. Scientific ideas of Mechnikov were not a categorical denial of the previous period of immunology. For almost 20 years, he himself had to fend off teleological and vitalistic accusations from the side of those biologists who denied the possibility of phagocytes to act expediently. An analogy helped Mechnikov to confirm his intuition was the phenomenon of intracellular digestion of amoebas or ciliates. Besides, he experimentally proved that phagocytosis was the product of evolution and not a “god gift”. However, in his works, Mechnikov also addressed to the category of “healing forces of the body.” Modern immunology now faces a number of theoretical contradictions and methodological difficulties related to reductionists paradigm: as far as the “split” between the world of “immune objects” (immune cells receptors, antibodies, cytokines, etc.) and “subjectness” of its basic categories “self-nonself”, “immune aggression, “immune defence”, etc., Ilya Mechnikov tried to overcome this contradiction substantiating the phenomenon of phagocytosis as functional system acting in accordance with defense purpose. The construction of “holistic” subject-object models of immunity (such as the symbiosis model of plant immunity) could be a way of overcoming the aforementioned contradictions.
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##article.viewOnOriginalSite##About the authors
M. V. Goloviznin
Russian University of Medicine
Author for correspondence.
Email: mvasilef@mail.ru
PhD, MD (Medicine), Associate Professor, Department of Internal Diseases, Dental Faculty
Russian Federation, MoscowV. I. Moiseev
Russian University of Medicine
Email: mvasilef@mail.ru
PhD, MD (Philosophy), Professor, Head, Department of Philosophy, Bioethics and Humanities
Russian Federation, MoscowV. T. Timofeev
N. Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University
Email: mvasilef@mail.ru
PhD, MD (Medicine), Chief Research Associate, A. Nesterov Department of Faculty Therapy, Medical Faculty
Russian Federation, MoscowN. S. Lakhonina
Russian University of Medicine
Email: mvasilef@mail.ru
Assistant, Department of Internal Diseases, Dental Faculty
Russian Federation, MoscowYu. R. Buldakova
Russian University of Medicine
Email: mvasilef@mail.ru
PhD (Medicine), Associate Professor, Department of Internal Diseases, Dental Faculty
Russian Federation, MoscowReferences
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