Psychiatry stuck in Newtonian physics

As I’ve said before, psychiatry tends to treat people as machines (see eg. previous post). Newtonian physics sees existence in terms of cause and effect rather than meaning. Modern science is based on experiment and has a comprehensive, mechanical, rational approach to nature. External observation is seen as the basis of worthwhile, definite knowledge. However, since Einstein, even our understanding of the physical world needs to be supplemented by quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity. Moreover, some kinds of knowledge are unknowable to us in terms of Newtonian physics, as we have beliefs and opinions which are not directly observable (see eg. another previous post). Our reality is social constructed by active shifting of moving and multiple points of view reinforced by social perspective-taking (see eg. yet another previous post). This does not mean that anything we think is true but that we need to think carefully about the way in which the external world impinges on our sense of reality. 

Psychiatry does not seem to realise that the mechanistic ambition of Newton’s laws has failed, at least beyond the physical world. The way in which the so-called human machine is constructed as viewed by natural science does not completely control and constrain human behaviour. Human beings have some freedom within those limitations. Human nature and life in general cannot be completely accounted for within the same laws and principles as the natural world. The body is both alive and lived. Biology cannot be a sufficient explanation of mental illness or human life in general. The brain mediates mental illness but cannot be its locus (see eg. previous post).