Ken's review of The Web

[Guest guest]

Ken,

 

You have written an eight page critique of one sentence of the

Introduction, and one paragraph of the Foreword, at the beginning of

The Web That Has No Weaver, and generalized this into an assault on

the credibility of his book as a whole, if not Kaptchuk himself.

 

You have based your review on some serious fallacies. The first and

most obvious of these is that you have completely ignored the main

content of the book, the content on which it should be judged. It

does not validate what you are doing to say that you're " not

intending to to do a more extensive review at this point. It's just

too big a chore " . It is simply dishonest to evaluate a work based on

less than one percent of it, even if your comments were an accurate

reflection of the text, which they are not. Of course, if you were to

evaluate the whole book, your arguments, or skeptical questions, or

what ever they are, would fall apart.

 

To further add insult to injury you claim that, " in the first

paragraph of the foreword " , Kaptchuk (who didn't write it) leaves a

" deep impression " that " Chinese medicine is a distinct form or system

of medicine that has come down to us in the present age after

thousands of years of more or less seamless transmission from its

mythic past into its present circumstances in the West today. " In

fact, the Foreword is not written by Katchuk at all, it's written by

Margaret Caudill, MD, of Beth Isreal Hospital, Boston. You do not

quote any text to support your accusation. Nor could you, because

nowhere thereafter is any statement made by either Caudill or

Kaptchuk implying anything like a " ... seamless transmission from its

mythic past into its present circumstances in the West today " . If you

can point to any passage that does say this, please do so.

 

On the contrary, The Web contains a Historical Bibliography, with

commentary, that makes clear the main historical turning points of

the past two thousand years. Anyone reading this would know that

there have been both evolution, changes and new ideas during that

period. Your claim that The Web misrepresents the history is simply

false. No doubt it simplifies it, but it's more than adequate for an

introductory text aimed mainly at lay people.

 

You also include a series of statements and questions, questioning

the training of Ted Kaptchuk and Dan Bensky at the Macau Intstitute

of . If you really wanted to simply know the facts of

their education, you could have asked it in two brief sentences. The

manner in which you do so suggests an attempt to undermine their

credibility. Of course, both Kaptchuk and Bensky have great

credibility, based on their direct contributions to the field of

Chinese medicine in the English Speaking world. If their subsequent

writing product is any indication, it was more than sufficient, and

was certainly better than anything available in the US at that time.

Despite a response from Dan Bensky describing the training, you

continue to question their training in a way that strongly reinforces

the impression that you are engaged in an ad hominem, rather than

judging Kaptchuk's book on it's own merits.

 

Rory

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