[The abstract and the concrete, the disciplinary and the interdisciplinary approach in the teaching of physiological sciences].

It is the author's thesis that the knowledge imparted in universities is being increasingly fragmented into a multitude of disciplines, which results in graduates who are trained to perform very limited functions and hence are impeded from developing their full potential. He refers to the position of the physiological sciences in the medical school curriculum and emphasizes the importance of moving from the concrete to the abstract and then back to the concrete in the study of these sciences. He discusses the need to change the institutional structure of the university in order to move away from this "disciplinary" approach to the imparting of knowledge. He feels that a change of this kind should be based on analysis, from a historical and interdisciplinary standpoint, of the concrete problems that arise in every part of society.