It is reasonable to expect the doctor to recognize that science may not have all the answers to problems of health and healing.

The remark argues for epistemic humility in medicine: even rigorous biomedical science does not exhaust what matters in healing. Cousins is often associated with a more holistic view of health—one that includes psychological, social, and existential dimensions alongside physiology. Read this way, the quote is less anti-science than pro-patient: it asks physicians to acknowledge uncertainty, to listen carefully to lived experience, and to remain open to factors (placebo effects, stress, meaning, relationships, hope) that can influence outcomes but may not be fully captured by current models or measurements. It also implicitly critiques medical overconfidence and the tendency to treat patients as cases rather than persons.