Paradigms in harmony and collision

[Guest guest]

Ken, Bob Felt, Amy, Todd and All,

I wanted to start a thread and come back to it from time to time if you will indulge this. I've seen some good come of China's attempt to integrate medical practice ... to attempt a harmony of paradigms. Like, Alon, I distrust comfort as any sort of substitute for clear vision.

I recommend that American Chinese practitioners take no comfort in hoping that Western scientists like me or my colleagues find research methods to "authenticate" CM. My colleagues are more about [1] disproving the validity of CM treatment; [2] viewing CM as a source of phytochemical raw materials for furthering their own pharmcological paradigm; [3] if able to authenticate anything about CM, then viewing CM as a primitive subset of WM.

Note that in ancient times of Persian poets and further back to those who wrote in Sanskrit, that winning an argument meant proving the other person right. The intention was harmony. Please consider this point very carefully, indeed. We live in different times. If Western science uses it's principles and paradigms to authenticate CM, then CM from the Western view is a subset of Western science ... what we in WM call a "modality". The way in which paradigms "harmonize" in current times is that the dominant paradigm co-opts the weaker but useful paradigm. I direct your reading to Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" ... pretty basic reading for anyone carrying out science in America.

Actually each paradigm has much with which to inform the other. But the Western paradigm is young, and it's boundaries are small. We Westerners tend to believe that when we lose our keys at night, they are generally to be found directly under the street lamp in front of our house. We shine our light of analysis to divide the problem into it monomer or monad parts. Our technologies are more analytic than synthetic. This is a sign that our technologies and paradigms of science are not yet mature. We refine our attention to ever more myopic realms and tend to avoid the discomfort of looking more plainly at the whole system and the larger homeostasis or ecology if you will. In the paradigms of CM diagnosis, the issues are sometimes larger and clarity is more available because the homeostasis is closer to hand ... literally. For example, from a previous post, if you can feel the neurontin or the Bu Zhong Yi Qi Tang in the pulse, then what homeostasis are you treating? This was always an issue for practitioners of merit from whom I've taken guidance.

Here I'll conclude with a 13th Century paradigm vision. One that gives me no comfort, but rather wakes me up and keeps my vision clear and calm.

Emmanuel Segmen

 

Wean Yourself, by Rumi

 

Little by little, wean yourself.

This is the gist of what I have to say.

 

From an embryo, whose

nourishment comes in the blood,

move to an infant drinking milk,

to a child on solid food,

to a searcher after wisdom,

to a hunter of more invisible game.

 

Think how it is to have a

conversation with an embryo.

You might say, "The world outside

is vast and intricate.

There are wheatfields and

mountain passes,

and orchards in bloom.

 

At night there are millions of

galaxies, and in sunlight

the beauty of friends dancing at a

wedding."

 

You ask the embryo why he, or she,

stays cooped up

in the dark with eyes closed.

Listen to the answer.

 

There is no "other world."

I only know what I've experienced.

You must be hallucinating.

 

From "The Essential Rumi"

translated by Coleman Barks