Is Chinese Medicine Scientific?
- Submitted by: naptin
- Views: 818
- Category: Science
- Date Submitted: 06/13/2011 09:36 PM
- Pages: 9
- Report this Essay
Introduction
Debate on the scientific value of Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been going on in the past decades. People argue that TCM can only be valued as an alternative treatment method to western medicine as well as a cultural asset instead of a real treatment option which is reliable and scientific nowadays. People are used to justify TCM’s value and effectiveness by the measures of western medicine, however, more controversial arguments out there to request to have review on the scientific value of TCM from different point of views.
TCM has been widely using by Chinese people for over 5000 years, it is believed that there were many different types of treatment options available over the thousands years in the development of China, the existing TCM nowadays is a selected one among them all by people of China in the history to be the most effective treatments to diseases. Those people who regard TCM is not scientific may not have good understanding of the development of TCM and they are possibly confined to define the matter by only comparing it with the modern western medicine. It is simply unfair to reach the conclusion that TCM is not scientific by the generalized evaluations which are commonly adopted by Western medicine. This paper explores the different points of view on evaluating the scientific values of TCM and also reveals the importance of its functionality and effectiveness on the evaluation process.
Different concept of scientific value
TCM is based on a scientific model entirely different from the one that governs the majority of Western medicine, which is governed by Western materialism. Western materialism is a specific type of science that can be defined tightly for hypothesis by a well constructed experiment. TCM does not fit into the framework of materialistic science because it does not meet the specific standards of methodology adopted by western medicine nowadays (Vickers et al, 1995). Before something can de deemed to be...
Debate on the scientific value of Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been going on in the past decades. People argue that TCM can only be valued as an alternative treatment method to western medicine as well as a cultural asset instead of a real treatment option which is reliable and scientific nowadays. People are used to justify TCM’s value and effectiveness by the measures of western medicine, however, more controversial arguments out there to request to have review on the scientific value of TCM from different point of views.
TCM has been widely using by Chinese people for over 5000 years, it is believed that there were many different types of treatment options available over the thousands years in the development of China, the existing TCM nowadays is a selected one among them all by people of China in the history to be the most effective treatments to diseases. Those people who regard TCM is not scientific may not have good understanding of the development of TCM and they are possibly confined to define the matter by only comparing it with the modern western medicine. It is simply unfair to reach the conclusion that TCM is not scientific by the generalized evaluations which are commonly adopted by Western medicine. This paper explores the different points of view on evaluating the scientific values of TCM and also reveals the importance of its functionality and effectiveness on the evaluation process.
Different concept of scientific value
TCM is based on a scientific model entirely different from the one that governs the majority of Western medicine, which is governed by Western materialism. Western materialism is a specific type of science that can be defined tightly for hypothesis by a well constructed experiment. TCM does not fit into the framework of materialistic science because it does not meet the specific standards of methodology adopted by western medicine nowadays (Vickers et al, 1995). Before something can de deemed to be...