interdisciplinary modes of rigor

[Guest guest]

As was apparent from quite a few responses to my first post, I did not

make my point clearly. I have been thinking about how convey my

intended message more clearly, and I realize now that I need to sketch

a broader context. I will do so in three parts.

 

Part One: Interdisciplinary Modes of Rigor

Part Two: What We Teach vs. How We Practice

Part Three: Analytical versus Analogical Mind

 

These re three interlocking discussions and I will submit them in

three separate posts.

 

Interdisciplinary Modes of Rigor

 

What constitutes knowledge? How do we know what an herb does? One

point of agreement appears to be that if something is stated in a

classical text, we accept it. Some of us believe that extensive

empirical evidence from folk traditions or modern clinical usage

constitutes an acceptable pathway of knowledge, although we disagree

as to what constitutes sufficiently extensive clinical evidence.

Given the expense of the Western medical EBM model and its frequent

lack of adequate resemblance to both the theoretical and clinical

structure of actual Chinese medicine in practice, it does not seem

reasonable to discount substantial folk or practical " evidence " just

because it did not accrue in a formal trial. Nevertheless we are left

with the question of, if the Western EBM standard of evidence is

frequently inadequate for our purposes, what is our standard?

 

I know that I am not saying anything new here; I am setting context.

Over the past several months that I have been a member of this list

serve, a great many good points have been made in a great many

discussions. I am not intending to discount or invalidate any of the

previous discussion; I am summing before adding a perspective.

 

My suggestion is that in order to achieve a rigor of verification that

is accurate and encompassing rather than narrow and self-defeating, we

need to work with not one standard but several simultaneously, i.e. an

interdisciplinary approach. If something is true, it must be true by

more than one method of evaluation, and preferable several. There

must be rigor of evaluation in each method, but I am most concerned

with the potentials of contrasting or overlapping methods, each

applied with their own rigor.

 

For instance, during the years when I was studying pulse diagnosis

with Leon Hammer, I never heard him quote classical texts... He

studied with John Shen, a Chinese master, and learned a theoretical

structure and a disciplined sensitivity of the fingers that is

astounding. From a strictly clinical perspective, Leon Hammers work

must be called rigorous; when he puts his fingers on a client's pulse,

he is not making things up, not is he teaching his students to make

things up. This is not a text-based rigor, but a consistent and long-

term progressive discipline of fingers and awareness.

 

I contrast this with the rigor of Paul Unschuld's approach to

understanding Chinese medicine. Is what Paul Unschuld had done with

Chinese medical history more rigorous that what Leon Hammer has done

with his fingertips? I cannot see how they can be compared, except

insofar as they are both very different examples of thorough

diligence. Are they of equal value? This may be controversial, but I

say that they must be ranked equally (not as individuals but as genre

examples of scholarly versus clinical rigor), because what is theory

and history without fingertips-- and what are we to do with what

meets our fingertips without a theoretical context?

 

Leon Hammer's education may be lacking as far as immersion in

classical texts, while Paul Unschuld's is lacking in that he is not a

practitioner, nor even a 'believer' in Chinese medicine, reportedly

choosing not to utilize it for his own or his family's health care.

(I must say that this is why I like very much to take my history and

theory from Elisabeth Rochat de la Valle and Heiner Fruehauf, because

it is hard for me to have complete faith that a non-practitioner is

not missing something that might be essential to the interpretive

process. This is meant as no disrespect for Paul Unschuld's work--

simply naming the way in which it is perhaps biased.)

 

This comparison is not to encourage us to dismiss either discipline as

incomplete and therefore invalid, but to recognize the incompleteness

of each and embrace a multi-disciplinary approach.

 

I take a second example from qi gong. While employed at a particular

school of Chinese medicine, I happened to be in the herb dispensary

while a qi gong class passed by. The qi gong teacher had all the

students hold hands, and invited me to join the group too (I did so).

At random the teacher selected an herb from the formula that I was

making: shu di huang. He held it in his hand, and there moved through

the group a deep sense of thick dark silence, as though we were all

suddenly at the bottom of the ocean. The teacher let go of this herb,

and chose at random another: chen pi. As he held this herb,

everyone's posture shifted, faces brightened, and a brisk liveliness

of the mind-- hm, hm, like bees at work-- filled us.

 

Obviously no words can quite capture the sensations of a qi gong

herbal experience, but one must at least try.

 

This qi gong teacher had no formal knowledge of herbs, could not

identify them, and had never read an herbal text. With chunks of

Bensky 3rd edition memorized, I'm sure I couldn't say that I knew more

about shu di and chen pi than this qi gong teacher knew-- and

conveyed!-- through touch and transmission.

 

The direct experience of an herb through qi gong practices is clearly

no adequate substitute for text-based knowledge of herb functions.

But just as clearly to my mind, a text-based knowledge of herb

functions is no substitute for the direct energetic transmission that

qi gong disciplines afford. With the qi gong alone, we may be prone

to making things up; we need accepted historical text to help us

verify and correct our perceptions. Without direct transmission, our

reading of text is no less likely to be fraught with interpretive

error, as our minds unavoidably seek to " fill in the gaps " left by

lack of direct experience with the subject matter.

 

We may call ourselves intellectually objective, but frequently this

only means that our imagination is simply more conventional, and our

assumptions more hidden. I say that it is imperative that, in the

name of rigor, we not wed our sense of valid truth to any one pathway

of knowledge, but instead ask that if something is true, it must be

verifiably true for the clinician and the scholar and the textbook

academician and the qi gong master-- and perhaps we might add the

scientist and the poet-- when all of these disciplines are practiced

with full and necessary rigor.

 

________

 

This is Part One of a three part essay designed to make more clear an

original post on 12/22, which was clearly not sufficient to

communicate a basic point about " esoteric " uses of Chinese herbs. I

will not begin working on Part Two, entitled " What We Teach vs. How We

Practice, " to be followed by Part Three, Analytical versus Analogical

Mind (as applied to understanding Chinese medicine).

 

Thank you for your patience.

 

Thea Elijah

[Guest guest]

Thea,

I also meditate with the herbs, just like I meditate with other people.

Is this the basis of your observations of the " personality of herbs " which

you teach in your classes?

 

I'm not saying that any form of observation is greater than the other,

but to be integral about it... are there others who have verified (had the

same observations as you, apart from the Qi gong class) ? In other words,

have your experiments been replicated?

 

We can do the upper left quadrant " I " personal-subjective observations, but

unless it becomes lower left quadrant " We " collective-testimonial and

upper-right quadrant " It " objective .... it will only be considered " art " ,

not " science " .

 

Have you set up proving-type experiments with large groups of practitioners,

using selective double-blinded parameters? I say this, because I do believe

in the " spirit of herbs " from first-hand experiences and it would be a huge

contribution to our profession if we can figure out how to share this with

others in a verifiable way.

 

Otherwise, your bio-field could be influencing the other Qi-gong

practitioners based on your own subjective interpretation of what the herb

should be doing. ... if you feel like Shu di is a heavy, sticky, dark root

and has this type of energy, metaphorically like an abyss, your bio-field

could weigh down the rest of the circle. That doesn't necessarily mean that

the root has that intrinsic character, but it does prove that humans

influence each other through our moods.

 

The herbs are speaking, but we're not necessarily listening,

Let's think about how an experiment could be created for this journey...

K

 

 

On Sat, Dec 26, 2009 at 12:58 PM, Thea Elijah

<parkinglotwrote:

 

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