Paul Unschuld's unanswerable question

[Guest guest]

Dear Emmanuel, Jim, Ken and Rory,

Thanks for your responses to my recent two emails about Unschuld.

 

Basically, I agree with your points. We could continue to discuss

specific ideas in detail, but probably we are already aware of the

same issues, and in basic agreement. Therefore, for the moment, I'll

restrict myself to mentioning that in my opinion, Unschuld's

'unanswerable question' is intended to do two things simultaneously:

 

1) To provoke us to examine CM deeply, in ways that we have mentioned.

2) To integrally factor in the current threat of the

biomedicalization of CM, and have us approach CM in a manner that

obviates this threat.

 

A result of this approach is that we must live with various types of

uncertainty, but that's how it is. I mean 'how it is' in both a facile

and deep sense.

 

Wainwright

[Guest guest]

The idea of incoherence arising out of the multiplicity of possibilities in

an open-ended universe is different to the incoherence produced when

'signals' are out of sequence in space or time. The former can resolve

itself into meaningful patterns, objects; the latter will always be just

random scatter. So what 'incoherence' is Unschuld referring to, and is this

the same as the one Emmanuel is referring to (I take it Emmanuel is

referring to the former)? The reason I ask is that I am not sure if there is

something subversive about Unschuld. Sammy.

 

 

Emmanuel Segmen [susegmen]

18 October 2003 02:59

 

Re: Paul Unschuld's unanswerable question

 

 

Rory,

 

I think you are on to something here. I believe CM's incoherence observed

by Western historians is cognitive as relates to first principles of an

empirical science ... like The Scientific Method. Why not look for

coherence in non-cognitive ways. Empirical sciences are great for the

creation of technologies but fall flat when it comes to the art of carrying

things out. Bleeding your patient went out quite awhile back in Western

medicine. Then all of a sudden we discover that menstruating women have an

advantage over men with regard to heart disease ... until they stop

menstruating. Mmmm ... makes you want to go to the local blood bank a few

time per year ... and bleed yourself. My point here is that life is a tad

larger than a human mind ... even the best human mind ... even the

collective minds of humans. Why not practice a medicine that approximates

the size of the Life we are living. Could be that CM is that big a

medicine. Could be that's why it's cognitively incoherent.

 

Just some random thoughts. My apologies for intruding.

 

In gratitude,

Emmanuel Segmen

 

-

Rory Kerr

Friday, October 17, 2003 6:05 PM

Re: Paul Unschuld's unanswerable question

 

 

At 7:59 PM +0000 10/17/03, wainwrightchurchill wrote:

>I speculate that if one looked at either category, one would find that it

was paradigmatized. There would be a distinct theoretical modality, or set

of theoretical modalities, that people related to as a whole. So, in both

cases, individuals would relate to what they were doing as a unity, instead

of a plurality. Another way of saying this is that their practice would be

cohesive.

--

Well, is it not necessary to have some sense of theoretical cohesion, in

order to practice medicine. If the opposite of cohesion is incoherence, are

you advocating (on Unschuld's behalf) that Chinese medicine should be

practiced incoherently.

 

>As I understand Unschuld's point, he is shattering this illusion of

unity, of wholeness, of cohesion - whatever you want to say about it, or can

say, CM as a totality is not coherent. It can't be bound together.

--

It's one thing to say that Chinese medicine cannot be seen as as a unity

over it's history, because there is no constant within all the examples that

have existed historically. It's another to say that there is no example of a

form of Chinese medicine that is coherent (which is what you seem to be

implying). Over the past two millennia, is there not a consistent use of

yin-yang theory as the foundation of a form of Chinese medicine? many

authors refer to it, either explicitly or implicitly, over the course of

this period. That would seem to be a coherent theory consistently used over

the historical period. Is Unschuld saying this is not so?

 

>It can't be paradigmatized. For this reason, among other reasons, it is

not amenable to scientific research. This is not unfortunate - it is also

Chinese medicine's salvation, for to the extent that it cannot be

paradigmatized, so it cannot be subjected to a research process, which in

the cultural environment in which this would take place, would lead to its

biomedicalization. So, therefore, CM, because of its intrinsic nature, must

accept its incoherence, and keep itself separate from scientific process.

Therein, and only therein, can CM find its freedom, although this is

compatable with its own nature.

--

If you accept that at the level of the practitioner, there has to be

coherence in order to practice, then there is something to study. If the

practitioner has several colleagues who practice based on the same

theoretical and clinical basis, then there is an example of a coherent

shared paradigm. If the theory is based in yin-yang, five phases etc, it

would be hard to argue that it was not Chinese medicine.

 

>This is a profound and difficult statement to live with, and this is, I

believe, why we find difficulty coming to terms with it. Given our

acculturation, it is counter-intuitive. As Jim quoted Tisbett: 'Westerners

focus on or create salient objects, use attributes to assign them to

catergories, and apply

>rules of formal logic to understand their behavior. By contrast, East

Asian thought relies far less on categories or on formal logic; it is

fundamentally dialectic, seeking a " middle way " between opposing thoughts.

Unschuld's unanswerable question involves us, in our field, having to forgo

the process of categorising salient objects of our own creation, and having

to, as a consequence, suspend applying the rules of formal logic to

understand their behaviour. This is both the consequence of the nature of

Chinese medicine, and is also necessary for its survival.

--

No doubt it is true that when you ask an average western practitioner what

is Chinese medicine, the answer is going to be different than if you ask the

same question of the average Chinese practitioner. However, both would have

something in mind when you say Chinese medicine, and both would have an

answer. In fact, most practitioners of Chinese origin that I have

encountered have a very strong sense that Chinese medicine is a clearly

distinguishable something, and are quite ready to distinguish things that

are not it.

 

By the way, don't you think that Unschuld's position is another form

of absolutism?

 

Rory

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

, <ga.bates@v...> wrote:

> I think you are on to something here. I believe CM's incoherence

observed by Western historians is cognitive as relates to first

principles of an empirical science ... like The Scientific Method.

Why not look for coherence in non-cognitive ways. Empirical sciences

are great for the creation of technologies but fall flat when it

comes to the art of carrying things out. Bleeding your patient went

out quite awhile back in Western medicine. Then all of a sudden we

discover that menstruating women have an advantage over men with

regard to heart disease ... until they stop menstruating. >>>

 

 

Emmanuel:

 

Bob Felt has enlarged the question of what CM " is " to what will be

its role in our Western culture and politics. But does Western

culture and politics think that Western medicine is coherent and

scientific?

 

 

Jim Ramholz

[Guest guest]

Emmanuel:

 

Bob Felt has enlarged the question of what CM " is " to what will be its role in

our Western culture and politics. But does Western culture and politics think

that Western medicine is coherent and scientific?

 

 

Jim Ramholz

 

Jim,

 

Thanks for asking. I sense that Western medicine and science along with Chinese

medicine are all dealing with the same universe, the same homeostatic balances

and the same programming that we generally and collectively refer to as Life.

Whether you use the premises of Western science or those of Chinese medicine or

perhaps Taoist principles from which the medicine in part arises, you deal with

something larger than cognition. My perspective when I teach is to note to my

students how the Western scientific method is extremely careful to select

research problems solvable with the technological tools that we have. Some

people have this illusion regarding Western research that it employs intuition

and creativity. Generally such things are frowned upon in the lab. In fact I

had a beloved chemistry professor who regularly asked me, " so was that intuition

or do you actually have some evidence for that? " The word intuition was stated

with a level of derision that could barbeque chicken. Gotta remember to always

search for your lost keys directly under the lamp post where the good light is.

My personal sense then is that Western science's limitations are precisely its

coherence and rationality ... its unwillingness to be embarrassed by a lack of

evidence despite clear demonstrations of efficacy. Western science asks, What's

the mechanism? To which I say, pour me another shot of that mythos, Barkeep.

Give me the good stuff ... yeah, that Joseph Campbell Reserve stock you keep

there on the top shelf. Thank you.

 

Jim, you and I both have seen that our own forward march of Western science in

physics is now entering the realms of mythos ... " the speed of light is God's

speedlimit " ... Fritjof Capra's physics in relation to Taoist principles and so

on. Hey, I learned how to calculate the probability of whether a particle was

inside of a one dimensional box using Schroedinger's equations. Really good

fun. Whether you look at Western science in biotechnology or you look at it in

computer technology, the fabulously missing elements are ethos, mythos, and as

Ken Rose would say " cultural substrate " . Half the crops in America are

genetifcally modified. Too late to even consider an ethics regarding that.

Chinese medicine actually arises from ethos, mythos, and cultural substrate.

We're all sweating here on list whether something that magnificently deals with

Life could possibly limbo on down under the coherence stick ... the lowest level

of the common mind. Excuse me if I find myself giggling uncontrollably. I'm a

mere scientist who tries hard not to beat his students too hard with that very

stick. My technique is to give my students itsy bitsy quizzes every week and

make it 75% of their grade, then I give them a final exam that is a selection of

the quiz questions for 15% of the grade, then I hurt 'em real bad with tough lab

practical ... but it's only worth 10% of the grade. Ah, the coherence stick.

I've gotta give them grades, and they've gotta live in this Western culture.

But most of the time I'm challenging them to see life around them in it's

" uncertainty " .... it's lovely incoherence. So then lecture includes a bit of

exhiliration ... a bit of a rush .. as we peer over the precipice. You gotta

give them something that keeps them coming back to class.

 

Hey, I've gotta run a half marathon tomorrow morning. Flush all this coherence

out of my head. We get to run from Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco out

across Golden Gate Bridge to Marin County then back across the Bridge and back

to Fisherman's Wharf. 3,000 runners ... more than half women!!! ... trying to

run 6 or 7 minute miles on that little three person wide sidewalk on the Bridge.

Ahhh ... sunrise over Baghdad by the Bay.

 

In gratitude,

Emmanuel Segmen