Turkish Neurosurgery
2018 , Vol 28 , Num 2
Minimalism in Art, Medical Science and Neurosurgery
1Adana Numune Training and Research Hospital, Department of Neurosurgery, Adana, Turkey
DOI :
10.5137/1019-5149.JTN.18855-16.1
The word "minimalism" is a word derived from French the word "minimum". Whereas the lexical meaning of minimum is "the least
or the smallest quantity necessary for something", its expression in mathematics can be described as "the lowest step a variable
number can descend, least, minimal". Minimalism, which advocates an extreme simplicity of the artistic form, is a current in modern
art and music whose origins go to 1960s and which features simplicity and objectivity. Although art, science and philosophy are
different disciplines, they support each other from time to time, sometimes they intertwine and sometimes they copy each other. A
periodic schools or teaching in one of them can take the others into itself, so, they proceed on their ways empowering each other.
It is also true for the minimalism in art and the minimal invasive surgical approaches in science. Concepts like doing with less,
avoiding unnecessary materials and reducing the number of the elements in order to increase the effect in the expression which
are the main elements of the minimalism in art found their equivalents in medicine and neurosurgery. Their equivalents in medicine
or neurosurgery have been to protect the physical integrity of the patient with less iatrogenic injury, minimum damage and the
same therapeutic effect in the most effective way and to enable the patient to regain his health in the shortest span of time. As an
anticipation, we can consider that the minimal approaches started by Richard Wollheim and Barbara Rose in art and Lars Leksell,
Gazi Yaşargil and other neurosurgeons in neurosurgery in the 1960s are the present day equivalents of the minimalist approaches
perhaps unconsciously started by Kazimir Malevich in art and Victor Darwin L"Espinasse in neurosurgery in the early 1900s. We can
also consider that they have developed interacting with each other, not by chance.
Keywords :
Minimalism, Art, Neurosurgery, Medicine