Middle Medicine

To answer this question, it is necessary to understand that Chinese Medicine is already a science. Not a stumbling folkloric tradition of superstition and empiricism, not a proto-science not quite aware of itself, and certainly not a pseudo-science – the masquerade ball of charlatanism.

“It is important to remember that western science is not more rational than chinese science, merely more analytical.”
-Manfred Porkert, M.D., Foundations of Chinese Medicine

As unrecognizable as it might seem on first glance, Chinese Medical Science is rigorous, logical and based entirely on observable phenomena.
We modern people have certain conceits -we believe that we possess the sum of all knowledge at our fingertips (we don’t), we believe that we have purged ourselves of superstitious thinking (we haven’t) and we believe that we are the most intelligent human beings ever (we’re not – biologically we are identical to the recent humans of the past 30 000 years or more). In all, we forget that we know and understand what we choose to know and understand; the things that interest or compel us, in other words. There is much to learn, and re-learn.

It is easy to forget that science is merely the process of observing, creating a theory, testing it, observing again to see if theory pans out. It is actually how all living creatures learn, despite the recently deceased (and modern scientific) notion that animals are machines with no intelligence, emotion or sentience. I would go so far as to say that a living creature cannot survive without using an effective scientific system as part of its learning process. It is therefore part of the modern myth that science did not exist before western culture popped it out of the oven fully formed.

The modern flavour of science we all mistake for the only science possible is merely a measurements specialist science. Or as some point out, a science fixated on materials and quantities. However, many factors caused for there to be an interest in the growth of measurement and materialism, and because so many became interested, the measurement specialist science grew and developed. It is not my opinion that measurement specialist science is very difficult. In fact, its rapid development over the last two or three centuries indicates to this writer that it is a relatively easy field from which to derive results. The difficulties lie where they always have – in the fields of “why” and “ought we to”. In fact, it is the reckless movement of the measurement specialists that have quickly (easily?) led to at least two of the most ill-conceived paths to destruction we’ve seen – nuclear holocaust and global climate change / pollution. And here we find the very large weakness of the measurement specialists – there is a type of understanding of numbers, weights and probabilities, and very little of human beings.

Modern measurement specialist science is notorious for its poor performance in the arena of subjective consciousness, and there is a reason for this: measurement specialist science does not recognise itself. Introspection illuminates subjectivity; only conscious self-appraisal illuminates our motivations.

All experiences new to us automatically seem to carry with them a sense of unreality as our mind adapts itself to the new information. Seemingly preposterous things then become, in time, known and familiar. This can, as usual, work both ways.

“It is the arrogance of the present to imagine that all of human history reaches its culmination, and unveils what was all along its hidden purpose, in the generation that happens to be breathing at this moment upon the surface of the earth.”
- James Gardner