[Buddha-l] Re: Medicine, Efficient Cause and Philosophy

Tue Sep 4 10:48:47 MDT 2007

In response to Dan Lusthaus:

"Katherine,
With all due respect, you seem to be confusing a few
basic categories. Demanding a material base for
identifying a disease and/or its cure is a matter of
material cause, not efficient cause." 

*** Mainstream medicine and pharmacy demand an
efficient cause, i.e., a principle of change in the
Aristotelian sense.  (But they only demand it for
non-mainstream medicine.)  This need not be a material
base.  The fact is that mainstream medicine and
pharmacy are uncomfortable with homeopathy working
with substances that go beyond the Avogadro number.  

"Medicine's turn to that is due to Descartes, not
Democritus' and Leucippus' atomism -- much less
pythagorean numerology."

*** Of course, Descartes’ concept of
organism-as-mechanism had a lot to do with
contemporary mainstream science’s mechanistic outlook.
 Ever since Fritjof Capra, Descartes-bashing has
become quite fashionable in "progressive" scientific
circles.  I neither support nor bash Descartes, nor do
I say you engage in either.  Westfall and Wallace do a
better job than I can of pointing out the Pythagorean
and atomistic legacy in modern science.

"The mechanistic outlook is often tied to the
invention of the mechanical clock as a microcosm for
how the universe works, and had already worn itself
out by Bergson's day (his major contribution comes
with his analysis of time and duration, especially in
facing Zeno's paradoxes, not with any challenge to
mechanistic thinking)."

*** Bergson may have not set out to challenge
mechanistic thinking as his main project, but his
remarks about its seductiveness in the first pages of
*Creative Evolution* are certainly insightful.  I am
not so sure that the mechanistic outlook has worn
itself out.  It has just become more subtle, and tied
to current technologies, that, unfortunately, have
more influence on us than we care to admit.

"To divide the history of Western medicine into airy
and earthy is simplistic reductionism in the extreme
(what about fire and water, not to mention ether?)." 

*** Coulter simply detects those two lines of thinking
in Western medicine.  Typologies are never fully
comprehensive and are always, necessarily, exclusive
of at least some members of some classes.  The "airy"
and "earthy" nicknames are not Coulter’s.  I had
forgotten where I had picked them up, but your e-mail
spurred me to go to my dusty files and dig the old
article out:  H.R. Robinson’s "A theorist’s philosophy
of science" in *Physics Today*, Vol. 37, No. 3, 1984,
pp. 24-32.

"For a somewhat surer guide to what the ancients were
up to check out Philip van der Eijk, _Medicine and
Philosophy in Classical Antiquity: Doctors and
Philosophers on Nature, Soul, Health and Disease_
Cambridge, 2005."

*** I will check it out.

"Western medicine has been resistant to alternate
claims precisely because of a long history of
dangerous quacks (mesmerism, electrical therapies,
snake oil, the list is endless). They have insisted
that respectability comes with empirical verification,
and have grudgingly embraced chiropractics (spinal
manipulation, not the "elixirs"), acupuncture, and a
variety of alternate therapies precisely because they
demonstrate testable results."

*** As I have said in my two previous posts, there has
been a fair amount of empirical verification of
clinical trials in homeopathy.  Double-blind clinical
studies on several homeopathic remedies have been
performed and repeated in the last two decades.  This,
however, has fallen on mostly deaf ears in mainstream
medical circles.

"It's important, however, to keep in mind that if a
specific homeopathic treatment proves effective, that
does not entail that (1) the whole homeopathic edifice
is therefore vindicated,"

*** That is exactly what I said in my two previous
posts.  Coulter and others seem to think that the
homeopathic edifice is vindicated thanks to successful
clinical studies.  This has not been the case.

"or (2) that the "explanation" for the efficacy of
that specific treatment has anything to do with the
homeopathic theories it may come packaged with -- any
more than a tribal healer's explanation of the various
spirits that aid in his diagnosis and treatment are to
be accepted as the effective agents in a treatment --
especially if one can isolate other elements in the
treatment and achieve the same results."

*** That is what I implied when I said that homeopathy
has tried to "save the phenomena" in any number of
vitalist ways that have left the mainstream medical
establishment largely unconvinced.  Unfortunately,
mechanistic thinking persists in mainstream science,
albeit in more sophisticated, subtle ways—far beyond
the crude mechanical clock.

"Acupuncture is an instructive case in point.
Obviously the anatomical model presumed by acupuncture
is off the charts for Western medicine, and various
attempts over the years to link the qi circuits to
lymphatic or endocrine or electro-nervous pathways,
etc., have failed. Yet -- for SOME things – it
unmistakably works, [ . . . ] bottom line it is a
recognized medical procedure). And NO ONE KNOWS BY
WHAT MECHANISM it works."

*** Yes, that’s my point.  No one knows by what
mechanism it works.  If in spite of that acupuncture
is a "recognized" medical procedure, then it has been
far luckier than homeopathy.  I agree with some
homeopaths, prominent in the international scene, that
once the mechanism is found and can be easily
explained, homeopathy will be mainstreamed.  I might
add that Bill Gray’s *Homeopathy: Science or Myth?
(North Atlantic, 2000) and Gerhard Resch and Viktor
Gutmann’s *Scientific Foundations of Homeopathy*
(Barthel & Barthel, 1987) are bold attempts at
explanation.  

"Railing against the "medical establishment," the FDA,
etc., has been a long-time sport."

*** I hope I did not give you to understand that I was
railing against the "medical establishment."  I do not
engage in that "sport," if it is one.  I simply see a
disagreement between mainstream science and
non-mainstream science due to different world-views. 
Nevertheless, it would be interesting to see how the
distribution of power in society plays into all of
this.

"In the 1960s the two loudest railers were Carleton
Fredricks and Adelle Davis, who put most of their
energy into promoting healthy diets, vitamins,
avoiding additives, etc. Davis died at 59 of stomach
cancer, and Fredricks in his early 60s of a heart
attack. The world -- and health -- is just not that
simple."

*** Agreed, it is just not that simple.  We can all
pull out stories of great-uncles and great-aunts who
smoked liked chimneys, pickled themselves in liquor,
ate only white bread and chocolate bars, and lived to
be a hundred.

Katherine Masis
P.S.  Maybe we should go off-list for further
discussion?

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