Should the dialectical view empirical thinking of traditional Chinese medicine

Source: China's traditional Chinese medicine

Author: on the

It is not hard to see from the formation and development of medical process, its are rooted in the Chinese traditional culture, is a product of long-term practice, the crystallization of the accumulation of experience. This kind of experience in the theoretical system and clinical practice throughout the phenomenon, form the distinctive characteristics of traditional Chinese medicine, become a "landscape" of traditional Chinese medicine. Study and application of traditional Chinese medicine theory and method, are inevitably to deal with all kinds of experience, and is easy to form the empirical thinking habit, will in turn because of its own limitations of traditional Chinese medicine theory and bring a lot of obstacles.

"The so-called empirical thinking"

The human mind is usually divided into two forms, perceptual thinking and rational thinking and rational thinking by empirical and theoretical thinking, including formal logic thinking and dialectical thinking of two parts.

Usually refers to the perceptual experience, namely the people in the process of practice, through their own senses to have direct contact with the objective world and get things show the preliminary understanding of the phenomenon. Experience has important position in the people's understanding of the process, it not only from concrete to abstract, and from abstract to concrete.

Empirical thinking is based on experience, or has formed the traditional idea of problems as the starting point to analysis and judgment of thinking form, is the most basic, most general normal form of thinking, is rising from perceptual thinking to rational thinking especially indispensable important form of thinking, dialectical thinking and scientific development in the early human use of one of the main scientific research method. About its characteristics, some scholars summarized as a "content, visual perceptual, know the importance of the limitations of superficiality, observation and analysis of the quantitative sex".

Empirical thinking is belongs to the category of empiricism or empirical, it is a kind of thinking tendency, namely, solidify the particular experience, the specific experience generalization, and the thinking Angle is confined to the experience in practice, within the scope of the inadvertently to experience as the supreme authority thought orientation. In other words, in the process of the whole thinking of the tendency of empiricism, can to empirical thinking.

"The limitations of empirical thinking of traditional Chinese medicine"

Empirical thinking is inertial thinking of mankind, and determines the formation process of experience is itself has the inevitable natural defect, so this way of thinking if not combined with logical thinking and dialectical thinking, it is easy to form the empirical thinking, leading to the thinking to be partial, conservative, closed.

partial Experience in human cognitive activity, become the main body thinking activity on important "memory". In cognitive, people will go to the "memory" habitual or subconsciously to search for relevant information, choice and the new situation, new problem the same or similar experience knowledge, as thinking basis points, to establish the idea and method to solve the problem of the current step. Therefore experience has important utility, is the necessary premise that constitute the theoretical thinking.

But experience has obvious one-sidedness, mainly manifested in the following aspects: (1) due to the cognitive level, cognitive perspective, cognitive environment and cognitive conditions such as subjective and objective factors, and experience the basic composition of factors or subject is perceptual experience, so even if there is a certain degree of rational cognition content, cognitive experience also hard to avoid subjectivity and one-sidedness and narrowness; Such as "kidney tonifying spleen is better than" (Sun Zhao) and "tonifying spleen kidney is better than" (yan) and fight, "no sputum not being dizzy" (by creek) and the "no empty without making dazzling" (the theory of zhang jingyue), etc., are showed respectively by cognitive limitations. (2) experience is often reflected by the surface of things. Despite the phenomenon is the starting point of understanding activity, but also run the whole understanding of the basis and premise, but the way things are often not straight in the surface, need to use rational thinking to "see the essence through the phenomenon of" hold, but this is not the kind of empirical thinking itself can completely do it. (3) experience is often included in the main external links, and the breakthrough point of the external contact is grasping the overall relationship, but is no substitute for real comprehensive internal relation between things.

In general, the process that determines the experience acquired its own one-sidedness, and when these rational knowledge in the form of experience in the practice of cognitive activity, actually don't have to know the specific environment previously. If ready-made is essentially the thinking box is limited to experience, experience even cut off the connection between the thinking and theory of thinking and interact with each other, make the thinking hard to jump to a higher level.

conservative With experience as a starting point of thinking, itself also contains a certain conservative, because it is already set in advance of a cognitive Angle, cutting or measure of the scale of the standard.

Empirical thinking is more fully exposed the conservative characteristics: (1) as yet or ongoing cognitive activity, empirical thinking is restricted by the existing experience, according to the disease that new changes to improve, enrich and develop existing experience, but wishfully always demand to adapt to the previous experience cognitive activity, hidebound, cut, like diabetes, said Yin scorching namely; Speaking of coronary heart disease: blood stasis block; Speaking of hypertension: essence of liver Yang, etc. (2) is a cognitive activity from concrete to abstract, and then from abstract to concrete cycles, the dynamic process of continuous development and empirical thinking demands on experience to determine the cognitive activities, try to change should change, to meet rigid and long on the level of perceptual experience. Such as understanding of stroke onset process, that is, it can be seen that the ill effects of this conservative - from the outside in zhang zhongjing within virtual evil wind said, until after tang and song dynasty to emphasize internal injuries damage accumulation of endogenous wind said.

Closed empirical thinking to be limited to the experience of thinking level, nature shows its sealing ability. Main show is: (1) rejection of indirect experience, even exclude theories. Once a certain experience that will be the experience in diagnosis and treatment process of assimilation and become a kind of subconscious behavior of thinking, thinking starting point fixation in empirical level, and not blind self-confidence, produce the experience of others, even to the theory of contempt. (2) empirical thinking is not rational thinking, but will be subject to experience, habits and feelings. Under this kind of dominated by the experience of the closed mind, cannot avoid dogmatism and empiricism. Some doctors in clinical emphasises a disease from a point of differentiation, or in the practice of a certain party a medicine to disease, can be regarded as the sealing performance.

"How to avoid the empirical thinking"

Influenced by traditional culture and the cognitive conditions, traditional Chinese medicine in understanding physiological pathology and diagnosis and treatment of the body to establish the overall concept, based on the rough and simple dissection, mainly through meticulous observation for a long time to contact with outside, use as than class analysis method to use to get to know the efficacy of the formulas in the form of experience. In the process of the repeated, experience the resulting, but also inevitably doped into many subjective, and with some natural limits.

There is no doubt that experience is a huge wealth of traditional Chinese medicine, empirical thinking is the basic way of thinking in TCM. By learning the experience and draw lessons from, mostly to the specific situation of disease after a certain, find and select an idea or plan for the success of diagnosis and treatment. Therefore, the study of TCM related experience is a shortcut to improve their level of clinical diagnosis and treatment, and dig deep, system experience of traditional Chinese medicine is also perfect, the only way for developing TCM theory.

Experience of thinking for research and development of traditional Chinese medicine provides the basic train of thought, also for traditional Chinese medicine theory and brings the convenience, and empirical thinking also constitute the TCM development obstacle, make its development process is full of hardships and twists and turns, even pay a painful price. Such instances is everywhere, such as the 17th century ago, the healer basically used neijing "difficult" point of view, and the warm disease classified as typhus, typhoid, mutatis mutandis, the processing method. This kind of misdiagnosis and the disease, is actually caused by empirical thinking. Challenged until the 17th century, after some of the doctor's point of view has been seriously, and gradually formed a science of seasonal febrile diseases of the French medicine system.

History of traditional Chinese medicine has a prominent phenomenon, that is because of different doctrines shicheng and form a group and factions, such as according to the research direction of typhoid fever, xiao, HeJian divided by or content, warm disease, huitong school, or according to the knowledge point of view of cold divided by or treatment, putty, ziyin, capturing, vulcans and so on. In fact all of these school is first put forward by experience holder some ideas or theory, after being accepted and respected, which formed a small group. Part of these experiences to rise to the theory, by theory such as typhoid fever, science of seasonal febrile diseases, but it still exists in the form of theory. This is that these theories are based on experience also carry the defects of empirical thinking.

Above all, is the traditional Chinese medicine theory and method, empirical thinking is necessary, empirical thinking is should try to avoid. That is to say, the experience of traditional Chinese medicine should be the dialectical view, both should be fully adopt the destinations, using, and can't JiaoZhuGuSe, for its limit, into critical thinking of "empiricism" mind-set troubles. Only in this way can we truly set up the theory of TCM thinking and play the advantages of syndrome differentiation, and rich, the perfect theoretical system of TCM.