The *Science* Cult and the *Backwardness* of Chinese Medicine
Zhang Xianglong (Peking University)
Can science take only one form, or can different forms or versions of science be permitted? In more traditional Western learning and thought, science was held to be the study of grasping the unique truth in some domain — so in any one domain there could be only one science. From the Greeks on, scientific meant absolutely certain and deductive, since mathematics (deductive science) was taken as the model. Knowledge thus obtained does not err. In modern times empirical science arose; observation entered the concept, and science came to mean both deductive science and natural science. Natural science seeks, on the one hand, to keep the features of deductive science — invariant, foreseeing or constructive truths; on the other, to study natural phenomena and find within them invariant laws. In all, this view sees science as the search for the unique, absolutely certain, objective truth. So scientific activity tries to seek a state free of life-context and human factors — an ideal, purely objective state — whether mathematical or laboratory-experimental. This is the view of science most popular in China today.
By this view, the truths science finds are invariant, so the development of science is a process of accumulating truths, approaching the truth ever more closely. From this comes an optimistic view of progress: human knowledge can step by step approach the truth. This view seems beyond question, and has yielded a cult of science — what is scientific is held to be infallible, unique, absolutely objective. The methodological inquiry into whether scientific truth has fundamental limits is never made.
In fact this view is rather old and incorrect. From the late 19th century it began to decline, because within a single domain quite different scientific systems appeared: non-Euclidean geometry, the theory of relativity. Later quantum mechanics also showed that in the depth of the physical world scientific fact and human activity are not separable. This did not deny science's objectivity, but did show the objectivity is limited. Such revolutionary findings began to shake the traditional view of science and truth.
By the 1960s a major shift came in Western philosophy of science. The American philosopher of science Kuhn, taking heart from these advances, thought deeply on the nature of science and arrived at views of great influence. The new view: the relation between different scientific systems in the same domain is not necessarily a matter of who is true and who is false, or who is more true, but of who is the stronger and fits the current scholarly currents better. Two theories may each have strengths and weaknesses; under different historical conditions and different practical play, their strength and weakness can shift. So scientific truth is not absolutely objective, unique, exclusive. Nor is it universally applicable regardless of all conditions and scope; rather, it is true in dependence on a certain era's certain scientific community. The formation of such a community is bound up with cultural and life background. As Husserl said: science is at root grounded in the human life-world; with different life-worlds, the understanding of science may differ.
So science is not the incarnation of absolute truth; scientific truth may be plural, each form having its strengths in different conditions. And since every scientific theory has its own peculiar explanatory function, structure, and mode, theories cannot be wholly neutral or universal. To remake one theory by another, to make it more scientific, is absolutely impossible — in fact it is to use one theory to wipe out and absorb another. Applied to medicine: this means Chinese medicine and Western medicine can be, and in fact are, each strong in its own way (each with its own truth and scientific character), each running on its own. The theoretical integration of Chinese and Western medicine is impossible. To make Western medicine the (scientific) model and force TCM to scientize or modernize will only cremate TCM's theoretical or scholarly soul.
TCM's yin-yang and five-phase, jingluo and acu-points, ziwu liuzhu, wuyun liuqi theories are inwardly continuous with ancient Chinese philosophical thought and cultural quality, making it deeply different from Western medicine built on dissection and other empirical sciences. It has a living meaning-world built by its own theory and cultural background, with its own special way of engaging the actual world and observed fact — full of cultural and philosophical depth, with artistic spirit, especially sensitive to the patient's life-situation, especially to timing, yet still verifiable. It has been verified, in fact by several thousand years of remarkably successful medical practice. But all this verification was within TCM's own meaning-world. Apart from it, TCM loses its theoretical spiritedness and the source of life; it cannot press toward experience with creative thrust, but is the tiger fallen to the plain bullied by dogs — a poor student before the wrong empirical test. Western medicine too, taken apart from its theoretical and meaning world, cannot run. The scientific character of any system shows only under the conditions of holding to one's theoretical root, playing one's thought-energy, and speaking one's own subtle language.
In TCM education this means holding theoretically to a line drawn with Western medicine, dialoguing with the other on the basis of having built and maintained one's own life. So the whole mode of thought and education must shift. Now not only must textbooks and curricula return TCM to its origin, but as far as possible, in forms modern people can accept, the traditional apprenticeship system must be restored. Because TCM is not learning that can be wholly objectified, universalized, or quantified; it is much rather situational, intuitive, experiential, dialogical, awakening, artistic learning — without long, situational interchange between master and apprentice, the newcomer cannot enter this meaning-world that corresponds to heaven, agrees with earth, communicates with people. Of course the all-round revival of Chinese culture in education is the precondition for TCM's real revival. On the other hand, in my view, under the present Western discourse hegemony, only with the help of some of the most living new Western thought can the reasoning be made clear, break the mental shackles set on our heads, and recover free, natural living space.
Originally in Modern Education News, October 19, 2001, page B1.