Perplexity A.I makes the case that in science and medicine we have moved on from the Age of Causation to the Age of Kitchensinkism versus Sine Qua Nonism.
Perplexity A.I m akes the case that in science and medicine we have moved on from the Age of Causation to the Age of Kitchensinkism versus Sine Qua Nonism. Medicine and public health have drifted from a tight focus on clear causal mechanisms toward a muddier landscape where almost everything is treated as relevant and almost nothing as truly indispensable. This can be framed as a shift from an Age of Causation to an Age of “kitchensinkism” versus “sine qua nonism” in how disease is explained and acted upon. ajph.aphapublications +3 Age of Causation Classical infectious disease theory aimed to identify specific necessary or near‑necessary causes: Koch’s postulates, monocausal pathogen models, and later sufficient‑cause frameworks all sought to isolate elements without which a given disease could not occur. Epidemiologic models like Rothman’s “causal pies” still assumed that some components could function as necessary elements in every sufficient mechanism for an outcome, preserving th...