Medicine and Science—A Reflection on the Question of Whether Traditional Chinese Medicine Is Scientific

Reflecting on the question of whether Chinese medicine is scientific, I found myself, quite involuntarily, drawn into the dispute over whether there was science in ancient China. That is not really off the point; many articles discussing whether there was science in ancient China also mention Chinese medicine.

However, getting caught up in the discussion of Needham’s problem is not the only way to approach the question “Is Chinese medicine scientific?” In fact, even those who believe there was science in ancient China may still think Chinese medicine is “unscientific,” or at least “not scientific enough.” In discussing whether Chinese medicine is scientific, because of a difference in perspective, another issue also arises: whether Chinese medicine is “scientific” — that is, whether things that violate science ought to be abolished; whether Chinese medicine “should” be scientific — that is, whether Chinese medicine ought to be scientificized, or whether its original theoretical system should still be preserved, and so on. All of these questions are worth exploring. However, considering the adjective “scientific” and the verb “scientificize” does not directly address the most fundamental question: what, exactly, is science?

Does the whole system of theories and techniques of Chinese medicine count as “science,” or, to put it another way, is it a kind of “alternative science”? I tried to sidestep the topic of “whether there was science in ancient China,” and thought of a topic that might be even more off the point, but which nevertheless seems worth pondering.

Is “medicine” scientific? Or rather, from when, by what means, and to what extent did “Western medicine” become “scientific”?

Many Western universities today have departments of “history of science and history of medicine,” but not “history of science and history of mathematics” or “history of science and history of aesthetics.” This shows that medicine and science actually have some special relationship of being both close and distant at once — the history of medicine is neither simply subordinate to the history of science, nor can it be neatly separated from it.

Let us set aside, for the moment, any investigation of “ancient China,” and first look at the relationship between medicine and science in the ancient West…

February 28, 2006

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.