Too much philosophy

[Guest guest]

I also find it fascinating that when we say that TCM is impossible to test by science, or that scientific logic will destroy CM, we are actually expressing how difficult it is for our us to escape the cultural notion of linear causation that is rooted in the nineteenth century science we learned in high school. Consider the news last Monday about a blood test that correctly identified 63 of 66 samples in a blinded ovarian cancer detection trial, including the heretofore undetectable stage one disease. What that software does is compare different qualities of a blood sample to one another thus establishing a multi-variable pattern. It is the pattern that is diagnostic. It is the relationships that matter rather than a measured entity. The inputs are different (physically-detectable properties v. naked sense observation) but the multi-variable logic is exactly matched to that of Chinese medicine.>>>>Do you think the discussion on this, as well as the rest of the post in modern China is any different?

Alon

[Guest guest]

I think many useful medical techniques can be learned and applied without much reference to Chinese philosophy. However, I doubt that much of a contribution can be made, or its depth of application appreciated, without a real effort to understand the Chinese frame of reference, including its expression in philosophy, language, art and literature.

>>>>Perhaps that is exactly what is needed for such contribution and advances. It sometime takes being the outsider to see more clearly

Alon

[Guest guest]

I think many useful medical techniques can be learned and applied without much reference to Chinese philosophy. However, I doubt that much of a contribution can be made, or its depth of application appreciated, without a real effort to understand the Chinese frame of reference, including its expression in philosophy, language, art and literature. That does not mean I think that everyone who inserts a needle or writes a script must be able to discuss the relationship of the tao-tao motif on bronze age pots to demonology. It does however mean that I believe that a CM transmitted without respect for, and steady account of, the Chinese frame of reference can only fall-back to the default state of our native, cultural view. >>>>Perhaps this is exactly what is needed for progress and contribution. Sometime one can see better being an outsider

Alon

[Guest guest]

If you consider that relationships in Chinese medicine are based on the qualitative similarities among phenomena that are described by yin-yang philosophy, then analytic divisions would not exist. It is not that microcosm and macrocosm are inter-related, as is also often said, it is that you would not perceive a distinction between a `big' and `little' universe unless you assumed the principles of physics, the sub-atomic world.

>>>>Bob if this was strictly true then you would not speak of disease cause, or evolutionary process, at any time in TCM which is not correct. Looking at something from a separation as well as from not is the basic tenant of Yin Yang.

Alon