Le diagnostic

Diagnosis – Between Knowing and Doing


Call for Abstracts



24th-25th of October 2024


Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen



Despite being a critical part of the clinical practice, diagnosis has received relatively little attention in the philosophy of medicine literature, especially when it comes to diagnosis of somatic diseases.

Nonetheless, as a central concept and tool in both medical practice and biomedical knowledge/research, diagnosis offers several exciting epistemological and ethical questions.

In history of science, studies have often limited themselves to very specific historical settings to avoid anachronism. Diagnoses are however historical constructs that carry their history with them in their extension and use. Drawing on historical perspectives yield fruitful avenues for understanding how diagnoses come to be and are used.

In this conference we therefore wish to talk across historical, philosophical, and sociological approaches to diagnosis to investigate their dynamism and how they create relations and allow us to understand and act on disease. We will address the topic broadly touching on, among others, the following questions:


- What are the aims and functions of diagnoses and disease categories?

- How are diagnoses embedded in temporality (medicalization, demedicalization, staging, continuity, and discontinuity in classifications)?

- How are diagnoses shaped historically?

- How are diagnoses used in clinical practice, clinical guidelines and clinical research, and which tensions between them are underlined by thinking in terms of diagnosis?

- How to connect the apparent simplicity of the lab/clinical guidelines compared to clinical practice?

- How are other form of expertise (such as patients for instance) involved in the process of diagnosis?

- Are historical studies relevant for studying diagnosis in the present?


The conference will take place at Medical Museion and will focus on the sharing of ideas and discussion in addition to presenting research. We hope to include unusual formats for discussion (for instance working with objects) so please write if you have further ideas for this.


We welcome proposals for short, 15min talks from scholars working on historical, epistemological, social, or ethical aspects related to diagnosis and disease classification (including the specific questions mentioned above but contributions addressing other aspects are also welcome). Please send a 250-words abstract to sarah.yvonnet@sund.ku.dk and karin.tybjerg@sund.ku.dk. The deadline for sending abstract is 4th July 2024. We will return to you to you shortly thereafter.