Is Traditional Chinese Medicine a Science?
Technically, no. Not if it’s defined really technically.
However, if we remember what Karl Popper said, then it is as much a Science as this science of hypotheses and theories are.
Science is a history of corrected mistakes. – Karl Popper
Traditional Chinese Medicine has a long history, much longer that possessed by Western Medicine as we know it today. It has corrected itself on an ongoing basis, and is a real mess of corrections and re-corrections!
Only that it’s not so rigorous a science. This, I believe, is the Achilles heel not just of TCM, but of most traditional medicines. I understand most traditional traditional medicines to possess theories founded on some of the most important broad principles of nature, theories that are very applicable to health, but lacking in quantifiable detail that the practitioner can precisely document and pass on the the next generation. The details are no doubt observed and made use of, but they are often in the domain of “experiential competence,” or “learning by doing” if you may. We see this in modern medicine too – like how a surgeon just keeps getting better the more operations he does. The difference though is that the theoretical fundaments of TCM are way “softer” than the rigor of the scientific method, which means more of these undefinables are needed in the learning of TCM.
The doctors and teachers here in China liken the practice of Traditional Chinese Medicine to making sense of a black box. You don’t know what’s in this box – also known as the human body – but you try to make use of what you see coming out of this box (e.g. the pulse, the tongue, the face color, the feces) to figure out what’s in there (diagnosis).
In Western medicine as we now know it, the body is also a black box. Except you can cut it up this time. Cutting up the box (physical anatomy) doesn’t give you the most complete picture about the box, but at least you can make some accurate quantifiable statements about the box. More importantly, you can quantify what you see coming out of this box. You can count the number of RBC or liver enzymes per unit of blood.
In conclusion, we can assert that Traditional Chinese Medicine has a framework for uncovering knowledge, only that this framework is not very rigorous. Not being as rigorous doesn’t mean it cannot work, but we’ll probably have a harder time repeating what works, because it’s hard to repeat something you don’t quantify too well.
This is my opinion on comparative medicine. Anyone else have an opinion, please feel free to drop a note.
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