I don’t know if it’s relying on science. It’s a somewhat tautological statement.
We are physical beings. All the processes happening inside us are mediated through chemicals. Most are assembled according to a building plans encoded in your genes and the building blocks come from your environment. Then obviously as the brain is the command centre of the body, it does involve the head.
Still, it doesn’t tell us much.
For all intents and purposes, we have shockingly little understanding of how the brain actually works. We know some chemicals have unexpected effects but we don’t always understand exactly how that happens. We don’t understand how memories are stored or recalled. We have some understanding of the feedback loops involved in emotion processing but that’s far from perfect. We are starting to realise that the processing happening in other organs like the digestive system have an effect on the brain but it’s not entirely clear which.
I think people generally are not humble enough regarding the level of actual knowledge we have reached in psychology and medicine.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we came to discover we had actually been missing something foundational at some point.
I agree that most likely genes, environment and the mind itself are an influence. But is science enough to resolve mental problems?
The mind is very close to a computer. Few people use science to develop or debug software. Even if there is a scientific model that explains why somebody feels bad, is that model enough to determine a cure?
The problem is if you assume a resolution is possible, and it can be shown to work, that is science. When people say "Science can't solve problem X" what they are saying is either "Problem X is unsolvable" or "X isn't really a problem". Science by definition is a a self-updating system that accepts new information based on what works.
That doesn't look like a scientific statement to me. What are its implications? Under what conditions does this hold? How is it falsifiable? What is the relative contribution of each element in that equation?
