Western Medicine and Chinese Medicine

Western Medicine and Chinese Medicine

Western medicine and Chinese medicine developed within the context of different cultures and perspectives of the natural world. The more reductionistic approach of Western biomedical sciences has generated tremendous knowledge of anatomy, physiology, histology, genetics, and biochemistry, while the phenomenological approach of Chinese medicine has produced a more holistic understanding of biology. The two concepts are complementary, and combining them to optimally balance detail and context could generate a highly rewarding step forward for medicine.

A diversity of perspectives on life and consciousness has developed across humanity’s different cultures. In the Western Hemisphere, a key development was the affirmation by Greek Ionian scholars such as Thales, Pythagoras, and Archimedes that it was not gods, but rather laws of nature, that create and organize our reality. The modern concept of the laws of nature emerged in the seventeenth century through the work of scholars such as Keppler and Galileo, with the most notable contributions coming from Newton and from Descartes, who emphasized a duality between the mind and the physical body.

The Science article is here.