unschuld on science

[Guest guest]

PU has some interesting things to say on science.

 

1. science merely means knowledge. I disagree. while the ancient root

of this word was chosen in hubris to refer to modern science alone,

modern science is distinguished from other forms of knowing by

systematic experimentation. this is no small difference.

 

2. science as knowing involves three things:

 

a. identifying a subject for research or understanding: nature,for

example

b. recognizing that the subject seems to conform to some laws of nature

c. confirm one's hypotheses through experience and mental abstraction

 

However, this a classic case of what Ken Wilber calls the collapse of

the universe. Wilber writes mostly about religion vs. science, but I

think his words apply here for two reasons:

 

a. the nei jing is treated with reverence like a bible

b. the criteria unschuld adopts for science in general could be

extended to any form of study (thus making anthropology a " science " ,

for example), including creation science or the cosmology of many

organized religions.

 

This is a collapse of the universe because it fails to recognize that

there are several basic ways of knowing. Sensory, Mental and

Transcendant. Leaving aside transcendant, the other two must interact

in any true science in order to yield predictable reproducible results

of any utility. while we can come to a consensus by agreement on many

subjects, we remain firmly in the realm of the mind until we can

develop an experiment that grounds our mental abstraction in the flesh.

Unschuld points to the greek accomplishments as science, yet fails to

mention that they were wrong on many points like the laws of motion,

for example. Because they failed to create experiments, their system

of knowing was flawed. Modern science has swept the world, because

unlike all other forms of culture bound " knowing " , it did produce

predictable, reproducible, utilitarian results.

 

A community of experts agreeing does not make something scientific,

though it does make it professional knowledge. In some areas, the most

we can have is mental agreement as no physical proof is forthcoming

(such as art or music), but medicine is not one of these areas, IMO.

Unschuld's position is typical of modern anthropologists in its

cultural relativism and the dismissal of the modern scientific method

as just another form of knowing. While that position is held in high

regard amongst social scientists, I would submit that such ideas hold

even less currency today outside liberal academia than they did in

decades past. Having said all that, Unschuld does fairly present all

the evidence in such a way that allows one to read it and draw

conclusions other than his own. And whether CM is metaphor or

morphology,it needs to be put to the test either way. I am sure even

PU would agree that the only experience CM has been put to is whether

is served the needs of the ancient chinese. But that proves nothing

about its clinical efficacy or validity of its ideas outside that

cultural milieu. and this necessitates a two pronged study,as I have

always advocated: a deep study of the context, the milieu AND a

testing of the ideas in the flesh with systematic research. While it

may be hubris to call science the sole form of knowing, it is just as

arrogant to suggest that studying the milieu is more important to

understand AND apply the ancient ideas. However, perhaps because PU

has no interest in applications, the systematic study of CM

therapeutics is of no interest to him

 

 

 

Chinese Herbs

 

 

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