Models  |  Listening  |  Caution

Reductionism attempts to understand the tiniest components of a biologic process in order to understand the whole. Hence,

Think about your own faith in THE TEST, the next time you visit a physician. At the end of the patient interview, the physician says I’m going to order some tests. That is it. The implication is that by obtaining the most precise measurement of something, your physician will be able to give you THE ANSWER.

While this thought process has contributed greatly to science, there are times when it may interfere with understanding. The reader will find that there are almost no ‘tests’ recommended on this website. Avoiding the reductionistic approach which would strive for the most precise measurement to find the answer, this site, voicedoctor.net, is an attempt to describe, rather than measure, the phenomonology of diseases of the voice. The model used here is based on the belief that once the phenomena of a given disease are understood, it is only necessary to recognize whether a character of a disease is present or absent. If all or many of the characteristics of a disease are present then the patient has that disease. It matters not how much of a given symptom a patient has for the physician to reach a diagnosis. Thus, precise measures that might be available through a ‘test’ are not necessary.

Perhaps an analogy might be helpful. Lets imagine a car driving down the highway is swerving all over the road, occasionally even off the road. A policeman sees this car. Now the policeman could order up some tests; he could measure the speed of the vehicle. He could count how many lanes the car crosses every ten seconds, from a plane he could perhaps calculate the angle of the car in relation to the centerline of the road. I’m not sure even with all these measurements that he could say with any additional certaintly that the driver may be drunk.

However in a nonreductionistic way he could say to himself, the driver of the car's behavior of disregard for his own vehicle, for property along the road and for the commonly accepted behavior of most drivers leads me to believe he is drunk. The latter is certainly a more expeditious way of resolving the problem at hand - getting the driver off the road.

Utilizing a test, such as measring the jitter in your voice at x.x, is like measuring a tree in the forest to understand the health of the forest. It is possible, but possibly not expeditious and in fact may lead you astray. Getting an overview of the capabilities of the voice is like flying over the forest. It misses some of the specifics, but you don't miss the “forest for the trees”. ‘Tests’ certainly have a place in research, I am not sure of their day to day use or helpfulness in vocal diagnosis.

Models  |  Listening  |  Caution