Incommensurability of paradigms

[Guest guest]

Emmanuel,

I agree with your points.

When I trained in CM, one of my physiology lecturer was a very

experienced medical doctor (GP) who was also studying CM. He made the

point that biomedicine was a very immature form of medicine, and I

have always found this to be the case. I'm sure that most CM

practitioners will quite soon learn that CM provides them with insight

to understand, often quite easily, a wide range of problems and

medical issues that biomedicine is very fuzzy about, or even has no

conceptual tools to deal with.

On the other hand, I think it's important to acknowledge that

biomedicine can also be a very powerful form of medicine. I have

patients who almost undoubtedly would not be alive but for the

biomedical care they have received. I think that generally, CM is a

better form of treatment for the great majority of issues that people

visit their doctors for, and if things were the right way around, CM

would be the first port of call, with biomedicine available for

secondary backup.

The paradigm issues that you and I have been discussing, in the way we

have been discussing them, I think are very important to help us to

understand the interactions between CM and biomedicine. I've often

thought of these matters in terms of 'enabling CM to survive.' I'm not

at all sure that it will. There are so many obstacles in the way - the

political-commercial power of biomedical interests, the hegemony of

science in our culture, etc. So, what I suspect will happen will be

that gradually, CM will be eroded by biomedicalisation, particularly

as biomedicine better understands issues like neurphysiology and other

subjects that may pertain to CM healing from a biomedical point of

view, and is able to suggest mechanisms for, for example how

acupuncture works. In other words, I suspect that we're going to veer

towards increasingly integrated medicine which will be based on a more

sophisticated version of biomedicine. In this process, a great deal of

CM will be lost, things that are of great value and might not be lost

if people understood paradigm and inter-paradigm issues better.

But, all is not lost, at least not yet.

 

Wainwright

 

 

 

-

" Emmanuel Segmen " <susegmen

 

Saturday, October 25, 2003 11:09 PM

Re: Incommensurability of paradigms

 

 

> Wainwright,

>

> I feel so nourished by your presentation below. I could address you

as Team Wainwright as you are a set of billions of cells working

together in layers of programming and communicating with Team

Emmanuel. One ecology of genes, memes and cells speaking with

another ecology of genes, memes and cells. Yet I have found in your

presentation below complete resonance with what I've attempted to

communicate on this list for so long. Yes, terms in one paradigm are

NOT translatable from one paradigm to another.

>

> My presentation over the previous months has included one other

feature. It is my opinion that CM is like a great living teacher. WM

is a virtual newborn by comparison. My own vision of Western science

is greatly enhance and directed by my slowly developing knowledge of

CM (still after 15 years in its own infancy). I used to get pushed

by professors who were subspecialties of internal medicine to look at

some things like the effects of " good stress " versus " bad stress " and

the outcomes in sleep, tissue repair, the immune system, the endocrine

system and daytime performance. I found that the most basic concepts

in CM were already dealing with a lot of this ... mood and stresses in

relation to liver function, for example. So my humble opinion has

been to steer away from a view that Western scientific methods applied

to CM treatment protocols would somehow add anything to CM. Rather I

found inspiration from CM to simply seek further in my Western

scientific understanding for phy

> siological mechanisms that have further resonance with the guiding

hand of CM.

>

> I don't suggest for a minute that translators should stop

translating. But rather that we must learn to read the original, and

be guided by the translations. They are commentaries, or summaries of

commentaries, or personal pathways. Here's Marnae's pathway up this

mountain. Here's Ken's or Jason's pathway up this mountain. Marnae,

Ken and Jason are Americans like me, and perhaps my pathway will

proceed similarly. It's like verbal sculpture ... rendering CM into

English. It's a model only of what to look for.

>

> Thank you, Wainwright, for amplifying so beautifully the song that

I've been trying so hard to sing. You've added a few truly essential

verses of your own.

>

> In gratitude,

> Emmanuel Segmen