Western medicine studies the human body using a reductionist approach. In the 16th century, anatomy began to appear in Italy, and the result of anatomy was to reduce the human body to various organs, and now to reduce organs to a collection of many cells, such as dividing the small intestine into intestinal walls, intestinal lumens... Cells are divided into cell wall, cytoplasm... Western medicine is to reduce human organs to the most basic building blocks, study their properties, and finally synthesize them into the properties of the human body. The next step is to reduce the cell to the double helix structure of DNA. At present, Western research believes that the DNA double helix structure stores information, but there are too many such double helix structures. In April 2000, the number of DNA base pairs in the international gene database had reached 6 billion, and now this number has reached 14 billion. Therefore, the reductionist method cannot be done when it encounters genes and base pairs, of course, it is not that it cannot be done, but it is too complicated.
And there is an even more fatal problem, which is that the reductionist approach is not suitable for the study of complex things. Reductionism holds that if we understand the basic laws of various things in nature, we can use them to derive the properties of complex systems. For example, reductionism believes that air is composed of many irregularly moving gas molecules, such as oxygen, nitrogen, dust and various rare gas molecules, and we can accurately know the movement of these gas molecules, and we can get the position and momentum of these gas molecules at any time, which is weather forecasting. Weather forecasting is to give the initial conditions of the atmosphere at a certain time, that is, the momentum and position of various gas molecules at a certain time, and solve them according to their motion laws. But in fact this determination is not possible. Although in principle the state of each air gas molecule is determined, it is really difficult to measure. Therefore, the relevant personnel assume that there is a probe measurement per foot, which can determine the pressure and pressure of the gas at a certain time, as well as the kinetic energy and position of the air molecules, and input it into the computer for measurement.
But this is not possible, because the state of the gas molecules at the location of the detectors can be determined, but the state of the molecules between the two detectors is determined. At the same time, there are some places on Earth where it is impossible to install detectors, such as the summits of the Himalayas or some valleys, which can only be estimated. In addition, there are different levels of air from the bottom to the top, and many detectors need to be installed, but in fact we can't install so many at all. Estimation creates errors, which, although small, are amplified nonlinearly after being solved many times by differential equations. Since this error is accidental, this amplification is also accidental. This fortuitous outcome makes events completely unpredictable. Therefore, it is impossible for the reductionist method to study the weather, and it is impossible to study the human body. Because there is too much data, it is too wrong to use the state of cells to study the entire human body.
There is a folk song in the West that tells about the small things that often happen in human life, but in the end they have very significant consequences. "One less nail loses a war horse, one less war horse loses a rider, one less rider loses a war, one less war loses a country. "The essence of this is that complex things cannot be studied in a reductionist way, with empirical methods and reasoning. So how should complex things be studied? At present, people have summed up several key points for the research methods of complex things: First, focus on the influence of the method of system integration on the overall nature. In a complex thing, the basic units in it are responsible for the whole, so it is important what the basic units are composed of for the whole, but what is more important is how these units are integrated and assembled. In the past, it was thought that the French army was the most enjoyable and warless army in the world, but Napoleon turned the French army into one of the most powerful in the world through scientific deployment. It's not that the quality of the French has improved, it's that they are "assembled" well and disciplined.
So for a complex thing, how to assemble is more important than the base unit itself. The second is to focus on the influence of the relationship between the parts on the nature of the whole. Zhuge Liang's "Eight Arrays" in ancient China illustrates this point well. The essence of this is to put the soldiers in different orders. Depending on the order of arrangement, the combat effectiveness will be different. Therefore, in the effect of the parts on the whole, the relationship between the parts is important. The third is to find the "saddle point" or "sensitive point" of the complex system, so as to change the state of the system in a way that "four or two thousand dollars" can be used. That is to say, not all positions are equally important in complex things, there will always be some saddle points, and these saddle points play an important role in the development of things. For example, if a stone is placed on flat ground, it does not have much effect, but if it is placed on the top of a mountain, the top of the mountain can be regarded as a saddle point, and as long as it is moved slightly, it will affect the whole body. This is what the purpose of capturing the high ground in war and the horsehoe mentioned above is the same thing. Therefore, for complexity science, the focus is not only on the nature of the basic concepts, but also on how they are assembled, how they are arranged, and how the basic units are in relation to each other. Be clear about where the system is sensitive.
Traditional Chinese medicine, Tibetan Buddhism, and Taoism are very similar, which shows that for thousands of years, human culture has studied life phenomena from different directions, and the research methods are not reductionist methods, but practice, summarize concepts, sublimate them into principles, and then apply them to practice to prove them. This method is suitable for studying complex things. Now we look at the meridians and qi of TCM from the perspective of complexity science. The problem of meridians and qi has been studied in the last century, but due to the limitations of science and the development of complex science, the above points have not been recognized, so everyone is trying to find out where the meridians are, what are the entities of the meridians, and what are the entities of qi. In fact this direction is wrong, and a large number of practices have proven to be unsuccessful, so it is likely that there is no matter that directly corresponds to the meridians and qi. The biggest difference between Western anatomy and Chinese medicine lies in this, anatomy cannot find the meridians and qi, and qi is actually a situation formed by the cooperation and collective assembly of a large number of cells and organs. This kind of situation is like the deployment of soldiers in war, when the soldiers are well organized, the combat effectiveness will be greatly increased, and this increase is qi. Therefore, the relationship between the various parts of a complex system and the way it is assembled determine that it can have a huge effect. The meridians and acupuncture points should be studied from the saddle point or sensitive point within this complex system of the human body. I'm talking about assumptions. Further research is needed in an experimental way. The assembly of the human body is very complex, and some of the places are saddle points and sensitive points, which can regulate the whole body with a slight movement.
Another aspect is where is the scientific nature of Chinese herbal medicine? In the past, the modernization of Chinese medicine was to extract the active ingredients of Chinese herbal medicine, and I think this direction is problematic and worth exploring. Because the effectiveness of traditional Chinese medicine does not lie in the few basic units, but in the whole assembled between them. For toothache, Western medicine believes that it is a bacterial infection, and the pathogenic microorganism can indeed be seen in the laboratory diagnosis, which can be cured with anti-inflammatory drugs. In traditional Chinese medicine, it is "on fire", and it can also be cured by using the right Chinese herbs. Because pathogens can be easily seen through examination, the "scientificity" of Western medicine is easily recognized. However, there is no detection method that can prove that the toothache is on fire, so the "scientificity" of Chinese medicine is easy to be doubted. In fact, the scientific nature of Chinese medicine is a complex system, which cannot be defined by simple Western medicine methods, and the conditions are not mature enough to be understood.