Sociology of knowledge is a sub-discipline of sociology, which aims to understand the attributes and meaning of knowledge from the perspective of sociality, historicity, interactivity and constructiveness through the sociological investigation of knowledge. Traditional Chinese medicine has played an active and important role in the fight against the epidemic of New Coronary Pneumonia. At the same time, the long-controversial issue of the attribute of traditional Chinese medicine has been highlighted again. Is Chinese medicine just a culture or a science? It is necessary to understand from the perspective of knowledge sociology.
TCM culture is also TCM science
The name "Chinese medicine" came into being after modern Western medicine entered China. Ancient China had its own titles for medicine and doctors, such as Qihuang, Xinglin, Qingyan, Langzhong, etc. Western missionaries who have entered China since the 19th century are the earliest users of the concept of "Chinese medicine". As a knowledge system born and raised on the land of China, Chinese medicine has developed continuously for more than two thousand years. "The Yellow Emperor's Internal Classic" is the earliest surviving Chinese medicine classics in China, which lays the theoretical foundation for diagnosis and treatment of traditional Chinese medicine. His thoughts of harmony between man and nature, interaction of yin and yang, and mutual restraint condensed the ancient Chinese philosophy's cognition of the world. In the process of development, Chinese medicine has continuously absorbed the essence of Confucianism and Taoism, and has become one of the most representative essences of traditional Chinese culture. It can be seen that Chinese medicine has both distinct cultural attributes and an important function of curing illnesses and saving lives. There is no dispute about this. It was only in modern times that Western science was introduced into China. Western medicine began to be known and widely spread, and the theoretical basis of TCM's treatment and rescue of people was significantly different from that of Western medicine, which triggered a debate about whether TCM is scientific or not. And this involves scientific standards and boundaries.
Knowledge sociology advocates putting science in the context of history and cultural context to explain and understand. In fact, the delimitation standards of science philosophy for science have been constantly evolving with historical changes. The early scientific view of logical positivism was replaced by falsificationism; immediately after the American scientific philosopher Kuhn put forward the "paradigm" theory, that science is a common belief held by the scientific community in a certain period, including concepts, theories, methods and discourse systems. It can be seen that no matter whether it recognizes the scientific attributes of TCM, it cannot be denied that TCM has long since developed into a set of logical systems with its own conceptual categories and logical self-consistency, and is recognized by all members of the "Chinese Medicine Community".
Lakatos, the British philosopher of science who was contemporary with Kuhn, developed "exquisite falsificationism" on the basis of Popper's "plain falsificationism." He believed that science was "a progressive research program." The "Science Research Program Methodology" proposed by Lakatos includes four parts: "hard core", "protection zone", "reverse heuristic" and "positive heuristic". From the perspective of the development process of traditional Chinese medicine, the concept of "integration of man and nature" and harmony between man and nature constitute its consistent "core" since ancient times; the theories of meridian points, internal organs, balance of yin and yang have formed an "auxiliary hypothesis protection zone". In this sense, the theoretical system of traditional Chinese medicine is completely "progressive research program".
Philosophy of science actually fails to answer the contradictory question of TCM as culture and science. Culture, humanization, narrowly refer to the content of the spiritual life of literature and art. Culture in a broad sense refers to all human creations—whether spiritual or material. In this sense, science also belongs to the category of culture. From the perspective of the long history of human social evolution, "science" is a cultural phenomenon that did not appear until a few hundred years later, and the trend of humanism thought gave birth to modern natural science. Science originated from culture, and then gradually became independent from culture. Generally speaking, culture in a narrow sense has regional attributes; while "science without borders" refers to the scientific knowledge that pursues objective truth and universality laws must go beyond the regional attributes and be universally applicable.
Traditional Chinese medicine belongs to local knowledge from the origin. From the classics of traditional Chinese medicine, we can see that at the beginning of the development of traditional Chinese medicine, we tried to draw a line with witchcraft consciously. The British science historian Needham classified ancient Chinese science, including traditional Chinese medicine, into the category of "pre-science". Western medicine was also derived from European local knowledge in the early days. Due to its close relationship with modern natural science, it quickly developed and expanded into a global knowledge system. The early Chinese medicine was of course limited to China or even to the Han nationality, but the development process has continuously absorbed the beneficial ingredients of traditional Chinese medicine such as Tibetan medicine, Miao medicine, and Persian medicine. Traditional Chinese medicine has stepped out of the country since modern times. The New Coronary Pneumonia epidemic is raging around the world. Traditional Chinese medicine has played an important role in China's domestic anti-epidemic and foreign medical teams participating in the global anti-epidemic process. As explained in the "Science" entry of the "British Encyclopedia", "Science involves a pursuit of knowledge, including the pursuit of various universal truths or the application of various basic laws." For thousands of years, the effectiveness of traditional Chinese medicine in treating people to save people and defeating the plague guarantees the continuity of the race, which shows that its theory can reflect objective laws and is scientific.
The holistic thinking of traditional Chinese medicine is highly consistent with the scientific view of complexity
As far as guiding ideology and basic principles are concerned, Western medicine can be reduced to reductionist medicine, which follows formal logic and experimental rationality. Chinese medicine is holistic medicine, following dialectical logic and practicing rationality.
Reductionism is consistent with the development of modern natural sciences: believes that the whole is composed of parts, and that high-level sports are composed of low-level sports. Western medicine, as modern medicine, is based on solid scientific foundations such as physics, chemistry, biology, human anatomy, and psychology, and has developed a complete set of subdivisions such as pathology, pharmacology, and gynecology and pediatrics in internal medicine surgery. system. The principle of treatment for the etiology and mechanism of most diseases can be explained from the molecular biology level. The diagnosis and treatment of diseases must be clear from the molecular formula of the drug to the protein structure of the receptor cell. The efficacy of the drug must also be carefully designed through double-blind experiments To be tested. Examination and interpretation make the scientific nature of Western medicine beyond doubt.
In principle, the diagnosis and treatment of traditional Chinese medicine treats the individual person as a whole life body, and the various parts of the human body are related to each other, "reciprocal and mutual restraint", and further regards the person and the nature as a whole, linking human health and pain to the climate, season and geographical environment , Differentiate the syndromes of Yin and Yang from the cold and heat. Chinese medicine is basically natural plant and animal products, so it is called "Chinese herbal medicine". There are different dosage forms of "pill, powder, ointment, dan, decoction", and the prescription "Junchen Zuoshen" is compatible with balance and coordination. Chinese medicine has more non-pharmacological means besides medicine, acupuncture, moxibustion, cupping, scraping, massage, massage, orthopedics, etc. According to the points of the meridians and acupuncture points, it is possible to "headache, cure feet, and hurt ears." Chinese medicine also emphasizes "homologous food and medicine", preventive health care "cures no disease".
Since the middle of the 20th century, the development of natural sciences has increasingly turned to complexity as the main object, and complexity science has emerged at the historic moment. The core tool of complexity science is system theory, emphasizing interconnection, balance and coordination, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts". It is not difficult to see that the holistic thinking of Chinese medicine is completely consistent with the systematic thinking and highly consistent. Qian Xuesen, a leading scientist in China's system science and a famous scientist, once pointed out that "Chinese medicine theory contains many systemic ideas, and this is a serious shortcoming of Western medicine. Therefore, the modernization of Chinese medicine is the right path of medical development, and it will eventually lead to the transformation of the scientific and technological system. -Scientific Revolution. "
Viewing the scientific nature of TCM theory from a developing perspective
The history of scientific development shows that the progress of science is a process of "conjecture and refutation" constantly approaching the truth. For example, the artificial intelligence "Alpha Dog" played Go to an invincible state, but its mechanism of winning chess is not easy to explain. The top human Go masters directly called "Unintelligible", and the team of engineers who developed and designed the "Alpha Dog" said that "Alpha Dog" wins chess by "deep learning", which is the result of a large number of repeated games to accumulate experience. However, we know that "deep learning" is only a formal imitation of the multi-layer neural network structure of the human brain and the cognitive process of thinking. It is the "low-level algorithm" for artificial intelligence to make breakthroughs, and it cannot explain how the "Alpha Dog" plays chess. The mechanism of winning chess. In order to give an explanation to "unexplainability", artificial intelligence scientists put forward the concept of "dark knowledge": machine learning can extract "knowledge that humans cannot feel and cannot express". The "clear knowledge" corresponding to the "dark knowledge" is the knowledge that people can feel, understand and express. The suggestion of "dark knowledge" reflects the limitations of human cognition. The “dark knowledge” that is not perceivable by contemporary people may be understood and expressed in the future, and “dark knowledge” will be transformed into “light knowledge”. Practice is the only standard for testing truth. The scientific nature of TCM theory has been confirmed by thousands of years of practice and will be further tested in future developments. Therefore, it cannot be easily rejected and rejected because of a temporary incomprehension of the mechanism and principle.
In short, with knowledge sociology analysis of TCM, Western medicine and their relationship, we can see that both of them have cultural attributes, because they originated from local knowledge, and because of historical reasons have formed a distinctive Chinese medicine culture and Western medicine culture; Both are medical sciences, but belong to two different scientific systems of paradigms. Historically, the standards and boundaries of science have been constantly changing, and human cognitive abilities and cognitive horizons are constantly improving and expanding. Therefore, it is our correct attitude to pursue truth and explore the unknown to look at the scientific nature of TCM theory from a developing perspective.
(Author: quartz, Professor College of Humanities and Social Development, Northwest A & F University, vice president of China Society Institute)