Wednesdays, 5:30 - 7:20 pm (PT) • 10 weeks • September 23 – December 2
Join us online!
Yale surgeon and author Sherwin Nuland often referred to medicine as the “Uncertain Art." This course explores how physicians, writers, and philosophers have grappled with the ambiguities at the heart of medical practice—and how narrative can illuminate what clinical language alone cannot.
Through memoir, fiction, philosophy, and case study, we examine the tensions between science and intuition, data and judgment, diagnosis and doubt. Primary readings include Mikhail Bulgakov, Henry Marsh, Atul Gawande, and Lisa Sanders—writers who reveal medicine not simply as a technical discipline but as a profoundly human one. Additional topics include the philosophy of science (Karl Popper), the tension between rationalism and romanticism (William James), epistemology and scientism (Wittgenstein), algorithmic vs. intuitive thinking (Groopman, Taleb), and the long conversation between the sciences and the humanities, from Pascal and Blake to Einstein and Tagore.
| Registration Opens August 17 » |
Course Instructor
Matthew MorrisonAttending Physician, Emergency Medicine and Lecturer, Vanderbilt
Matthew Morrison is an emergency physician in New York and has been a lecturer at Yale in the medical humanities. He received an MD from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and completed his emergency medicine residency at Mount Sinai-Morningside. He has taught with Yale's Prison Education Initiative, the Warrior-Scholar Project, and the New York Botanical Garden, and his writing has appeared in Film Comment, Case-Based Neurology, and Avoiding Common Errors in the Emergency Department.
Guest Speakers
Thomas C. DuffyProfessor in the Practice of Music, Artistic Director, Ellington Jazz Series, and Director of University Bands, Yale University
Thomas Duffy is a composer, conductor, and professor in the practice of Music at the Yale School of Music, where he has served since 1982. He is director of Yale University Bands and artistic director of the Ellington Jazz Series. His work spans composition, wind band history, jazz, and interdisciplinary research on music, creativity, and the brain.
Linda HonanProfessor Emerita, Yale School of Nursing
Linda Honan is a professor emerita at the Yale School of Nursing and a nationally recognized nurse educator. For more than three decades, she taught in Yale's Graduate Entry Prespecialty in Nursing program and helped lead interprofessional clinical education across Yale's health professions schools. Her research explores innovative approaches to clinical teaching, including the use of art, music, and narrative to strengthen observation, diagnostic reasoning, and patient care.
Lisa SandersAssociate Professor of Medicine, Yale School of Medicine
Lisa Sanders is an internist, educator, and writer best known for exploring the art and science of medical diagnosis. A faculty member at the Yale School of Medicine, she writes the long-running Diagnosis column for The New York Times Magazine and served as a consultant for the television series House.