Acupuncture and science don't seem to go well together. They're like oil and water. The philosophy underlying acupuncture, which is largely Eastern, holds a very different frame from modern science. Therefore, it's commonly said that acupuncture cannot be explained by modern science, and any attempt to do so would be misguided. But is acupuncture really far removed from science? That's a difficult question to answer. Firstly, defining what science is can be challenging. My personal opinion is twofold.
A Tale of Two Evidences - Empirical and Theoretical
First, acupuncture cannot be understood through scientific methods. Here, science refers to a materialistic, quantifiable, and objective approach.
More accurately, if you try to understand acupuncture solely through scientific methods, you can only see a very small part of it. Acupuncture is very experiential and subjective. It involves human relationships, emotional exchanges, and the exchange of spiritual energy. Attempting to understand such acupuncture with quantitative science is akin to trying to measure the weight of the soul quantitatively. It's impossible to forcibly explain something from a different dimension in terms I understand. Even if it were possible, it would only show a very small part.
Acupuncture and Making Love: The Delicate Dance of Attentiveness and Communication
Modern science has strived to quantify and understand beyond material subjects to emotional and spiritual aspects, using averages as a measure. For instance, stating that married individuals have a 10% higher probability of happiness than single ones, or that happiness increases up to a certain level of income, beyond which it does not affect happiness - this is all numerical play. Yet, in my surroundings, there are many happy singles and unhappy wealthy individuals. These efforts of modernity are being reassessed in contemporary science. It seems that spiritual aspects can be understood through spiritual understanding, and human emotions can be understood through emotional exchanges. Therefore, I don't think it's possible to evaluate acupuncture quantitatively and understand it in a reductionistic sense often termed as "scientific".
Second, acupuncture must be understood through scientific methods. Here, science refers to empirical and positivistic approaches.
How was herbal medicine discovered? The oldest herbal book in acupuncture, the Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing, introduces herbal medicines used in acupuncture on behalf of the legendary emperor Shen Nong. How did Shen Nong discover herbal medicine in legend? Did he have a sixth sense different from modern people? I thought our grandmother might be a witch in my childhood because she could predict the rain by watching a bird fly or forecast a drought by looking at the western sky. Ancient people might have had such extrasensory perception. Or did an alien civilization tell them about effective herbs? Or was it a revelation from God? The legend goes as follows:
"He is also said to have discovered and classified some 365 species of herbs and medicinal plants and is often referred to as the ‘God of Chinese herbal medicine’. Shen Nong tasted hundreds of herbs in order to determine their medicinal value. Because of Shen Nong’s efforts, numerous herbs became routinely used for health care."
https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-legend-of-the-divine-farmer
Another legend tells a different story:
"Sometime later, Shennong ate a poisonous herb by mistake. he immediately fainted and fell to the ground. Luckily, thanks to his divine spirit, he soon woke up. He looked at his body to see what damage the poison had one, and this enabled him to create a cure."
What we need to pay attention to here are the words "taste" and "mistake". Why would he, as a god, have had to test herbs through tasting? Why did he make a mistake that even caused him to faint? This legend suggests that the discovery and development of herbal medicine was not mysterious, but verified through the accumulation of experience.
"The description of 'Shennong tastes all kinds of herbs and encounters seventy kinds of toxic substances in a single day' is a legend in Chinese medical history, demonstrating that medicine is originated from practice."
Hao B, Kang X. [On the connotation of "Shennong tastes all kinds of herbs and encounters seventy kinds of toxic substances in a single day"]. Zhonghua Yi Shi Za Zhi. 2002 Oct;32(4):218-22. Chinese. PMID: 12639437.
So, as the famous pharmacist Wang Qing Ren emphasized during the Qing Dynasty, we need to continuously identify and correct errors in medicine. The scientific tool used here is EBM (Evidence-Based Medicine). The part I refer to as "science" here has a different meaning from the "science" I mentioned earlier. Sometimes, science can even conflict with EBM.
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| Wang Qing Ren: Correcting the Errors in the Forest of Medicine, |