Today I go public with my project to develop a philosophy and theology of health based on the work of the Canadian Jesuit, Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984). I have been engaged in this project since 2013, when I retired after 35 years from medical practice, specializing in internal medicine and palliative care. I completed an MA in philosophy at Boston College later that year and have continued since then as a research associate at the Lonergan Institute at Boston College.
After publishing a series of papers in which I began to explore health and health care using Lonergan’s methodical innovations for integrating theory and practice – self-appropriation, generalized empirical method, and functional specialization – I arrived at a schema for a comprehensive, book-length treatment of health from the perspectives of common sense, theory, interiority, and transcendence, corresponding to what Lonergan identifies as four historically emergent dimensions of meaning. The book, entitled Understanding the Dynamics of Health: A systematic, person-centered approach, is now complete and will be published by the University of Toronto Press in November, 2025.
The book will be available for sale as a hardbound text; it will also be available as an open-access ebook, which I hope promotes a wide readership. I intend this website to serve as a forum for feedback about the book, both its arguments and its pedagogical value, and for conversation that moves this project forward in developing a robust, person-centered, historically-minded understanding of health and health care.,
Dynamics of Health 
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