KLI

The Konrad Lorenz Institute, Altenberg, Austria.

The core academic material for this work was formulated during a period as a visiting fellow at the Konrad Lorenz Institute at Altenberg in Austria in 2005. My idea for that fellowship was to work on a treatise on (or at least some form of treatment of) the biological and philosophical understanding of the concepts of 'disease' and 'health' and also (somewhat ambitiously) 'life' and 'death'. This was successful in a number of unexpected (and non-standard) ways. I was able to develop a much clearer impression of the problems I was addressing. I was able to pin down for the first time the key issues that lay at the heart of the problems I was tackling and discover something of what their inter-relationship was. However, the overall picture that emerged was somewhat more complex than I was previously led to believe given the extant academic work available - particularly in relation to the concepts of 'disease' and 'health'. As a result, less was committed to paper than originally envisaged. However, that said, much more in terms of new ideas was generated and much more material subsequently expressed in talks and conference papers came about (click here). Initially, in the period since my time at the KLI, I have been developing my ideas but, at the same time, becoming progressively more frustrated as I have struggled with how these ideas could best be portrayed.

I believe that I have now devised a way of writing and presenting ideas that will begin to do this. Instead of focusing on complete written pieces that impose various patterns and restrictions on the content of the material being explored; here I am adopting what I tend to describe as a bricolage approach. I am focussing on exploring and building content – rather than final products – and allowing this to develop its own structure and organization, so far as is possible.

• I would like to express my special thanks to the trustees and fellows of the Konrad Lorenz Institute for providing me with the means whereby I was able to spend what proved to be one of the most intellectually important times of my life – so far.