Dear Members of the Korean Society of Heart Failure (KSHF)
The Korean Society of Heart Failure, founded as a research organization in 2003 and transitioned to the Society of Heart Failure in 2018, celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2023.
Now it is time to take the next leap. Over the years, we have been positively influenced by the American Heart Association and the European Society of Cardiology, and we are now playing a pathfinder role in various exchanges with heart failure societies in the US, Europe, Japan, China, etc. In the field of heart failure, visionaries have opened up new worlds with their insights and imagination, based on scientific proof. The role of the young physician (researcher) needs to be different. The most important attitude for creation includes passion and immersion, which are accompanied by numerous failures. As long as there is transparency about the process, the role of pioneers is to provide new opportunities, recognize diversity, and be tolerant of many failures.
As our knowledge evolved, the distinction between knowing and not knowing became more important. Empiricism, as a scientific methodology, emphasizes that without a priori hypotheses, new discoveries are logically impossible, as Hume and Kant argued in their books "A Treatise of Human Nature" and "Critic of Pure Reason.” In other words, hypotheses require imagination and transcendent reason to formulate, which involve error.
Darwin's "Origin of Species" is "one long argument" for the question of how complex organs and instincts can arise from simple cells. The argument is that the current complexity of species is the result of the diversity and dynamic competition of life in the past. Darwin was 27 when he completed his expedition and left the Beagle, and he needed 23 years of time for further exploration. In 1905, Hilbert published 23 problems of mathematics in Paris, which led Gödel to prove the "incompleteness theorem," a keystone of computer logic, which was an applied extension of the concept of Cantor's "diagonal method." The concepts of mathematics that were only in our heads were implemented on computers by Turing, and now CHAT-GPT, a type of AI, has evolved to reach "the singularity."
New scientific discoveries are revolutionary, and discarding geocentrism in favor of heliocentrism requires a change in beliefs, not just a change in knowledge. Thomas Kuhn's concepts of "paradigm shift" and "incommensurability" and Schumpeter's "creative destruction" mean that new concepts cannot be explained by existing concepts and require revolutionary change. Perhaps, the new reality is in the hands of those armed with new concepts after all. Moving away from nepotism, toward diversity and fair competition, and toward beliefs based on scientific methodology rather than dogma, is only possible with academic freedom and the conscience to base one's beliefs on scientific hypotheses and evidence and to dismiss them when evidence to the contrary is found by anyone, anytime, anywhere.
“The grand, leading principle, towards which every argument unfolded in these pages directly converges, is the absolute and essential importance of human development in its richest diversity.” Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Sphere and Duties of Government (cited as epigraph to J.S. Mill, On Liberty, 1859; cited on last page of The Constitution of Liberty by F.A. Hayek, 1960)
We are looking forward to the next chapter of the Korean Society of Heart Failure and hope that many people with passion and conviction will join us.
March, 2024
Daegyun Park, Chairperson of Council