Wikipedia for CM (was re: pi wei lun)

[Guest guest]

On 3/1/06, Par Scott <parufus wrote:

>

>

> If anybody has links to other complete period texts I'm trying to collect

> as

> many as possible as a resource, perhaps we can collect and host them on

> CHA,

> I've got a friend who could probably swing the storage space if it becomes

>

> an issue, but these days what's a gig or two between friends. Would there

> be

> a way to make a translation wiki for them so that people could append and

> annotate bits they translate for research purposes?

 

 

 

Just on that note, is there any sort of Wikipedia action happening for CM?

Seems to me like it would be the perfect marriage if done right. This is a

conversation I had with Roger a while back (I hope that's okay I've made it

public Roger, nothing particularly personal/controversial there) that

explain why I think why:

 

I wrote:

>

> Volker Scheid (links below) raises a very interesting point (amongst many)

> in terms of empowerment of individual practitioners in relationship to the

> entire profession. A biomedical doctor is in many ways little but a dressed

> up technician - I mean there are good technicians and bad technicians and

> nice ones and nasty ones. But the locus of innovation for that model is not

> with the rank and file, it is with institutions that have the means to

> perform scientific research/trials. Whatever they find out defines to a

> great degree what the doctors should be doing.

>

> Humanities/classics informed CM has a much more decentralised

> organisational model. The cool thing about a CM praccie is that they are

> allowed to be an innovator and a clinician simultaneously as they use their

> " signification " to, in a sense, remake anew CM at every

> single encounter. And anything that comes out of this process of

> particular note gets written down/added to the peer conversation so that all

> have access to that individual praccie's insight as part of the living body

> of knowledge. And since each praccie is an individual locus of control over

> the tradition (the degree of which is dependenton the amount of

> humanities/classics in their diet), anything that somehow got added to that

> body of knowledge that may actually be rubbish does not fatally disrupt the

> coherence of the whole tradition and hopefully with time gets communally

> chucked out (like an organism expels an irritant).

>

> A rigid TCM-er will also be prone to becoming a technician that practices

> on the wisdom and authorisation of institutional authorities outside

> themselves...

>

> http://www.paradigm-pubs.com/assets/pdf/orrere-1.pdf

> http://www.paradigm-pubs.com/assets/pdf/orrere-2.pdf

>

>

> Roger Wicke wrote:

>

> The model of TCM that you are describing is very similar to the

> process at Wikipedia.com <http://wikipedia.com/> (http://en.wikipedia.org/

> wiki/Main_Page_),

> where the public can update articles on any subject. Pundits

> initially predicted chaos and a lot of misinformation, but that

> turned out to be not true at all. Errors and the occasional

> intentional sabotage were quickly patched by regular users like an

> anthill being repaired by the ant colony. In fact, a group recently

> did a comparison of the reliability of the information with that of

> Encyclopedia Britannica, and found the number of mistakes to be

> comparable - only the mistakes in Britannica were more serious.

>

 

Imagine an entry for every single acupuncture point, classic book, herb,

formula.... entries for praccie, by praccies and policed by praccies! Cool

neh?

 

-Li

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with the group, Lionel. I was so

inspired by this that I wrote an essay and developed a lecture at

PCOM that references these thoughts, called " The Technician and the

Scholar-Physician " .

 

 

On Feb 28, 2006, at 11:54 PM, wrote:

 

>> Volker Scheid (links below) raises a very interesting point

>> (amongst many)

>> in terms of empowerment of individual practitioners in

>> relationship to the

>> entire profession. A biomedical doctor is in many ways little but

>> a dressed

>> up technician - I mean there are good technicians and bad

>> technicians and

>> nice ones and nasty ones. But the locus of innovation for that

>> model is not

>> with the rank and file, it is with institutions that have the

>> means to

>> perform scientific research/trials. Whatever they find out defines

>> to a

>> great degree what the doctors should be doing.

>>

>> Humanities/classics informed CM has a much more decentralised

>> organisational model. The cool thing about a CM praccie is that

>> they are

>> allowed to be an innovator and a clinician simultaneously as they

>> use their

>> " signification " to, in a sense, remake anew CM at every

>> single encounter. And anything that comes out of this process of

>> particular note gets written down/added to the peer conversation

>> so that all

>> have access to that individual praccie's insight as part of the

>> living body

>> of knowledge. And since each praccie is an individual locus of

>> control over

>> the tradition (the degree of which is dependenton the amount of

>> humanities/classics in their diet), anything that somehow got

>> added to that

>> body of knowledge that may actually be rubbish does not fatally

>> disrupt the

>> coherence of the whole tradition and hopefully with time gets

>> communally

>> chucked out (like an organism expels an irritant).

>>

>> A rigid TCM-er will also be prone to becoming a technician that

>> practices

>> on the wisdom and authorisation of institutional authorities outside

>> themselves...