Dragon Scales.

[Guest guest]

All,

 

Regarding:

 

> >>>>Again I think we are mixing things here. To frame thought

> in CM just takes good basic clinical training. It has nothing to do with

> knowing philosophy or Chinese. When I was in China every case had to be

> presented in TCM terms from starting first with a so called disease name

> to pattern differentiation. It just takes intelecturtal understanding of

> the basics of TCM. Lets not make it more than it is Alon

 

That would be what I might do were I training people for particular places

in today's medical delivery system, as is the primary target of this approach.

In this approach it is the biomedical distinctions that provide the `stack of

limits' for the logic. By making the starting point of the clinical

differentiation the disease, you get a ready-made prioritization of the

clinical observations, reducing the scope of what the student must know.

With the clinical observations prioritized, it is easier to select the treatment

principles because the biomedicine contextualizes the clinical observations,

reducing one of the more difficult logical chores.

 

AND

 

> And, in fact, it is a major problem in teaching clinics to get

> students to think in these concrete terms and refrain from being too loose

> and philoosphical in justifying their diagnosis. Liver constraint is

> confirmed by wiry pulse, distending sensations, emotional volatility. It

> is not confirmed because the patient dreams of dragons (rationale: liver

> is wood; wood color is blue-green, the same color as the scales of a

> dragon).

 

Whose dragon is it, can't be Barney, he's purple?

 

Would the folks linking cyan and dragon scales have done so had they a

sense of the dragon as a symbol/harbinger/agent of change in Chinese

thought? If you thought of a dragon in that context, wouldn't you see the

color of its scales as secondary to its relationship to qi at the extreme (at

the

edge of chaos - agent of infinity), or to dreams of flying with their

correspondences to zang fu signs (upper body lightness, unrooted qi)? Why

would you center on the color of wood (which is actually the color of

springtime sprouts), if you had learned the metaphor rather than

memorized simplified lists of five phase correspondences?

 

It seems to me that this type of thinking is the consequence not of too much

philosophy but of a limited philosophical vocabulary. The central issue

with this example seems to me to be over-simplification. If the first thing

someone in a clinical rotation thinks about in relationship to `wood' is the

color, rather than the more central relations to bending, stretching, and

orderly reaching, will they think to look for information regarding these

other correspondences when they are own their on in clinic? If they fail to

look at this central range of correspondences, will their clinical inquiry be

fully formed?

 

Is this way of thinking systematic correspondences have been forced into a

syllogism (wood = cyan, dragon scales = cyan, therefore dragons = wood).

Would that would make sense to someone who had an understanding of the

development of correspondence logic through demonic and magical

correspondences? Would this be their response if their training involved

texts that described the Chinese idea that dreams could evidence somatic

disturbance, or be premonitory, or be communications with people now

dead?

 

I seems to me that these are exactly the types of problems that would be

addressed by having students exposed to a philosophical foundation and an

unsimplified TCM literature. If I were forced to choose -- either a

philosophical foundation or an unsimplified literature -- I would choose an

unsimplified literature. But, there is no reason to choose, both can be

presented, and presented as a whole. When clinical observations are

exemplified by philosophy and literature, the images come through better

and serve to aid retention.

 

All of this discussion evolved from a discussion of curriculum, of what

people need to learn, and this example strongly suggests under-education in

how correspondence logic works and an over-narrowness in the information

available. Both are matters that can be addressed by making people aware

of Chinese culture and philosophy. Again, I believe that something beyond

the clinical detail is justified in our training because of its ability to help

people learn the conceptual tools.

 

Bob

 

bob Paradigm Publications

www.paradigm-pubs.com 44 Linden Street

Robert L. Felt Brookline MA 02445

617-738-4664

 

 

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