- Title
- Chinese medicine and complex systems dynamics
- Creator
- Herfel, W. E.; Gao, Y.; Rodrigues, D. J.
- Relation
- Philosophy of Complex Systems p. 675-719
- Relation
- Handbook of the Philosophy of Science 10
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-52076-0.50023-7
- Publisher
- Elsevier
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2011
- Description
- The concepts, principles and methods of complex systems dynamics have a profound impact on our appreciation of and engagement with Chinese medicine. Firstly, they offer a fra1ne,vork for understanding the funda1nental approach of Chinese medicine that for the first time renders it systematically intelligible in the terms of Western science whilst respecting its own salient commitments. In the process they underline the ways in which the orthodox Western medical worldview contrasts with that of Chinese medicine, and thereby the ways that complex systems approaches within Western medicine itself likewise differ from the orthodoxy. Secondly, they provide an articulation of Chinese medical aims and practices which emanate from its conceptions of health and disease permitting engagement with those of Western medicine. Thirdly, they highlight the differences between two distinct approaches in medical treatment and treatment validation: One, stemming from complex dynamics, employs methods focussed on tuning the patient to harmony. The other, deriving from classical science, aims at restoring homeostatic balance. The former emphasises the context dependence - especially patient-dependence - of diagnosis and treatment, whilst the latter seeks to abstract away from details of context, which from its point of view are "confounding variables' by employing traditional logical-causal methods. Fourthly and finally their application to Chinese medicine raises important epistemological questions about the roles of evidence, judgment, specificity and individuality in objective scientific medical research. These final issues are best analysed by illuminating the situated cognition and embodied knowledge of Chinese medicine in light of a complex systems dynamics perspective. This analysis shows that evidence, judgment and practice are more subtly interconnected in both medical traditions than one gets the impression from examining the literature generated by advocates of "evidence-based medicine", In the next section the groundwork for the enquiry are laid by contrasting the ancient cosmologies that underwrite Chinese and Western medical practice and theory.
- Subject
- complex systems dynamics; Chinese medicine; harmony; homeostatic balance
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1325311
- Identifier
- uon:25236
- Identifier
- ISBN:9780444520760
- Language
- eng
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