Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/44585
- Title
- Reconceptualising the philosophical foundations of health education with respect to the impact of food technology on human health
- Author/Creator
-
Hinchey, Mark
- Institution
- University of Newcastle. Faculty of Education & Arts, School of Education
- Description
- Masters Research - Master of Education
- Description
- In recent years a considerable literature has accumulated to establish that western society is confronting a monumental crisis in health care. In the thesis that follows we shall see that the nature of the growing crisis is multifaceted and includes scientific, socio-cultural and philosophical dimensions, all of which figure prominently in the way in which we educate people of all ages for health. My aim in the first part of the thesis will be to explore and reflect upon a number of these facets, with an aim to showing that the epistemological framework they presuppose represents a valuable but incomplete understanding of newly emerging health problems which are themselves, partly the outcome of the highly technologised societies in which we live. Once this preliminary objective of the thesis has been completed, I shall contend in Part II of the thesis that one area of crisis which remains insufficiently understood is the relationship between food and nutrition. I deliberately use the word relationship between food and nutrition, because the traditional emphasis of such concerns within the context of health has focused primarily on nutrition, largely in the quantitative sense of encouraging people to obtain enough vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates and fats required to keep them healthy. My contention is that without broadening the discussion to encompass the relationship between food and nutrition, the answers we give to the quantitative questions are inevitably myopic and limited. My goal in the third and final part of this thesis will be to make clear that in light of the importance of the connection we have with our food and recent developments made in the philosophy of quantum mechanics, an exciting new discipline is emerging which Professor Ronald S. Laura has called the ‘Metaphysics of Food’. As part of my elaboration of this area, I shall weave together strands of insight from the research of Professor Laura and Dr. Masaru Emoto, two major pioneers in advancing this field of knowledge. Professor Laura’s theory of ‘participatory consciousness', drawn from his elaboration of quantum entanglement and his theory of ‘empathetic epistemology’ provides a fruitful conceptual framework, I shall argue, for the philosophical elucidation of Emoto’s research on the metaphysics of vii water. Using the confluent theoretical interpretative heuristics of Laura and Emoto, my objective will be to argue that in principle, the foods we eat can themselves be impacted favourably or adversely in health terms by entanglements of consciousness which in turn affect our own health in subtle but important ways. Although the articulation of the pedagogic implications of this insight would be beyond the remit of this Master Thesis, a conceptual foundation will have been laid here upon which a new edifice for further research at the doctoral level can be built.
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Date
- 2010
- Keyword(s)
-
food technology;
human health;
health education;
nutrition
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Rights
- Copyright 2010 Mark Hinchey
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/44585
- Language
- eng
-
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