I’m writing my thesis, which partly explains… you know… the silence. Anyway, in a brazen display of my newly born lack of worry about what others think about me, I offer this brief paragraph. It was lifted, reworked and reentered into my thesis in another form – but this is the raw stuff that came from my mind unbidden.
All scientific systems rest on claims about the universe that are fundamentally unknowable. For instance, the currently popular system of Western science rests on a notion of the universe as fundamentally uniform. This is an untestable hypothesis, but it is used in research every day. Chinese medicine, similarly, contains information that is most simply described as metaphysical – untestable and unknowable information that is taken as given. The difference between the Western and the Eastern contexts is that the latter makes these foundations clear and available for discussion. While all Chinese medicine practitioners are aware of Yin and Yang and sometimes use these concepts in discussion physiology, pathology and treatment, no one I have ever encountered proposes that one could obtain a measure of either. The discussion of Yin and Yang in Chinese medicine should be no more shocking than it would be to find a couple of Western researchers discussing Schrodenger’s cat. While most Western researchers don’t engage daily with the philosophical and metaphysical underpinnings of their understanding of the world and things in it, this should not compel us to judge the Chinese medicine physician’s tendency to do otherwise.
Discuss.
Tags: epistemology, thesis, ontology, Science, western philosophy, philosphy of science
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Eric,
An assumption isn’t necessarily unknowable or untestable.
Heat and cold are yang and yin – we measure these every day. Less precisely we talk of people (or an aspect of them) being too yang or yin – which is a measurement (though not a terribly precise one).
Much of western science and philosophy is devoted to clarifying and debating the foundations. Epistemology is devoted to this.
I hope the thesis isn’t too tiresome – they can be an awful burden.
Evan,
Thanks for your comment. Of course not all assumptions are unknowable or untestable! In my thesis, I’ve been making a running list of things I will be assuming for the duration of the thesis (and for most of them, do so in my life as well) and nearly all of them are, to some degree, testable.
But most of those that I’m working with in my thesis are, in fact, untestable. As for unknowable, well, that entirely depends on what one means by knowing.
Thanks again for your comment, and as always, for reading! :)
Eric
Makes me think of something my favorite teacher once said in class:
“Science is just magic that has been mapped out with math.”
Before we understood the rotation of the Earth, the sunrise was magic. Before we learned about the relation between sex, babies, and 9 months, the creation and birth of a child was magic. The knowing didn’t make these events less powerful…but it did make them known, thus significantly changing the form of their power.
For me personally – I hope that LOTS of stuff keeps being untestable and unknowable. That’s what keeps the world interesting, keeps us exploring, and brings the light to a child’s eyes when a Faery flits by them.
But I’m kind of a Faery-believing hippy.
Huzzah! to the newly born lack of worry about what others think about you. Blessed relief, innit?
And thank you for illustrating the (largely) unconscious assumptions held within systems of thought. I find, when chatting with my friends who dwell in the western scientific paradigm, that trying to shed light on these assumptions is like trying to describe blue to a person who has only ever known red and yellow–can’t see ‘em til ya see ‘em. Ah, paradox, how I adore thee! Hurry up and finish that thesis, will ya?!
Huzzah! I can scarcely contain my excitement over reading your finished thesis. In fact, I’m not even going to try because I’ve accepted the nerd within. I am so glad you are bringing a philosopher’s mind into this work.
I just noticed I duplicated the last commenter’s exclamation.
That is quite the thesis. I would have never come up with something like. Your mind is a working machine.
For your thesis, I highly suggest looking at Paul Feyerabend’s work, if you haven’t already. This guy had a brilliant way of looking at science from a critical perspective. He wrote one article (I think the best he wrote) on equating scientific knowledge with religious belief. If you can’t find it, let me know and I might be able to dig it up for you.
Cheers
Hey Richard,
Oh yes, I’m definitely reading Feyerabend – he was one of the people I studied as an undergrad, but forgot about him until recently. He’s a tough figure, in some ways, because he was sometimes a little sloppy in his argumentation in his zealousness to make his important points. :) I will endeavor to use the best parts of his work.
Thanks for the comment!
Eric
I can scarcely contain my excitement over reading your finished thesis. In fact, I’m not even going to try because I’ve accepted the nerd within. I am so glad you are bringing a philosopher’s mind into this work.
The key to the longevity of chinese medicine (extends back over 700 years) is its practicality (ability to restore the normal function of the body) and of equal importance the flexiability of its theoretical approach.
How this flexiability matures in western mainstream culture is the real question that is being contemplated.
While there is no denying the value of westerm medicine or pharmaceuatical measures there still remains many conditions in which chinese medicine is effective at a fraction of the western medicine cost.
At a time in the world economy when the fruits of our excesses have come home to roost, Chinese medicine still remains a rich harvest.