This article discusses the lack of scientific evidence for two of the foundational theories of Chinese medicine, the Yin-Yang Five Elements and Sasang Medicine, and one of its main treatments, acupuncture, and concludes that Chinese medicine is unscientific.
When I was younger and wanted to be taller, I went to a clinic for a while that was run by a celebrity Chinese medicine doctor from TV. Before making a diagnosis, I took a few tests to see which Chinese medicine ingredients would work for me. The test was simple. First, I laid down, and then the practitioner placed the Chinese herbs on my moxibustion and measured the force on my arm with his arm to determine whether the herbs were suitable for me or not based on the magnitude of the force. I remember the whole process was new to me at the time, and I believed everything he said. However, I didn’t grow any taller as a result, and it made me question the practice of Chinese medicine.
Chinese medicine has been developed in Korea since ancient times. It is often referred to as an Eastern medicine in response to Western medicine, and it has evolved as a result of interactions with other countries in the East Asian region. Chinese medicine views the human body as a microcosm, and its basic theory is the Yin-Yang Five Elements theory, which centers on the principles of the universe. Theories about the natural world, human physiology, pathology, diagnostic and therapeutic drugs, and more are all explained in terms of the Yin-Yang Five Elements.
The Yin-Yang Five Elements Theory is the most important theory underlying Chinese medicine. Yin and yang is a basic system of looking at things and recognizing their relative differences by observing them as yin and yang, even though their essence is the same. For example, the outside of the body is yang and the inside is yin, and the upper and lower parts belong to yang and yin, respectively. Furthermore, physiologically, fever and increased blood pressure are seen as yang, while decreased blood pressure and slowed pulse are seen as yin. In this way, yin and yang interact with each other to regulate. When this relative equilibrium is disturbed, problems arise, and it is the job of Chinese medicine to restore it.
On the other hand, the five elements that make up the universe are Mock, Fire, Sat, Gold, and Water. Just like yin and yang, these five elements are balanced through a cyclical process of creation and destruction. Chinese medicine utilizes the coexistence and opposites of the five elements to resolve pathological phenomena. For example, the liver has a mutually nourishing relationship with the heart and a mutually restricting relationship with rain.
However, these basic principles of TCM cannot be disproved by Popper’s disproversialism, so TCM can be defined as a non-science. In this article, we will discuss the unscientific nature of Chinese medicine as a whole by showing that several important aspects of Chinese medicine are unscientific. First, the position of TCM is that every part of the human body can be corresponded to yin and yang, and that when this yin and yang are in harmony, we are healthy and disharmony can be resolved by TCM. However, the idea that the human body is made up of yin and yang is highly unscientific.
For example, if we say that the reason we get sick is because there is a lack of yin in the body, then all illnesses can be explained by yin. This would explain everything from the common cold to diseases like cancer, but such a theory is not scientific because it cannot be verified. This is also the case with Freud’s theory. His theory that “sexual desire” is the cause of behavior is an unscientific claim because it’s impossible to disprove. At the beginning of the 20th century, Freud published a theory that psychoanalysis could be used to cure a person’s mental illnesses. He believed that hurtful memories from the past are trapped deep in the unconscious, where they don’t disappear completely, but remain in the unconscious and affect consciousness and behavior in various ways. In order to cure mental illnesses, it’s necessary to retrieve these submerged memories and reintegrate them with current memories. In modern times, however, his psychoanalytic theories have been criticized as unscientific and belonging to the humanities rather than medicine.
From this perspective, the idea that the human body is composed of yin and yang is highly unscientific. For example, imagine a patient with a fever and high blood pressure. According to the theory of yin and yang, the patient’s yin is stronger than the yang, so the patient is out of harmony with the yin and yang, and the treatment is to reduce the yin through Chinese medicine. However, the problem is that there is no way to know if the treatment is reducing yin qi, or if it is strengthening yin qi and reducing yang qi, and if it is reducing yin qi, how much. It is possible to explain any illness in terms of the magnitude of yin and yang, such as ‘nose ring for nose and earring for ear’, but like Freud’s theory, it can only explain the aftermath, not predict or solve the future. In addition, contrary to the known yin-yang theory, the inside of the body is yang and the outside of the body is yin, and fever and blood pressure increase as yin and blood pressure decrease and pulse slowing as yang, so it is impossible to disprove the theory in any case. Similarly, the Five Elements theory is also impossible to disprove, and as a result, the Yin-Yang Five Elements theory, which is the basic foundation of oriental medicine, can be considered unscientific.
The impossibility of disproving theories is even more evident when we look at Sasang Medicine, which was founded by Ieoma in the late Joseon Dynasty. The theory divides people’s constitutions into four types: sun, tae yin, small yang, and noise, and treats illnesses according to their characteristics, saying that even if people have the same symptoms, they should use a treatment that suits their constitution to maximize the effect. However, it is impossible to disprove the idea that a person’s constitution can be divided into four characteristics. For example, according to Sasang Medicine, among the four constitutions, Taiyin is said to have more fire and less water than other constitutions based on the theory of yin and yang, which is impossible to disprove because fire and water are very abstract. Furthermore, the criteria for dividing Taiyin people from other constitutions, such as having a large liver and small lungs, are very vague, and the external description of Taiyin people, which includes many people who are physically fit and have gained weight, but also many people who are thin, is impossible to disprove because it can include any person.
Finally, we’ll discuss the unscientific nature of TCM treatments. There are many different therapies in Chinese medicine, but the best known is acupuncture. The principle of acupuncture is described as the treatment of meridians to help the flow of qi. Qi is the energy that energizes the meridians, and it’s said to be the wisdom gained from everyday life. However, this theory is impossible to verify and cannot be disproved, and like the theory of vital energy and Freudian theory, it is also an unscientific theory.
In this article, we have discussed the unscientific nature of TCM from three aspects. First, we discussed the impossibility of disproving the theory of yin and yang, which is the basic foundation of TCM; second, we discussed the refutation of Ichimae’s theory of thought derived from it; and finally, we discussed acupuncture, the representative treatment of TCM. As such, it can be said that Korean medicine is unscientific because it is impossible to disprove various elements that represent Korean medicine. Of course, there may be other elements of Chinese medicine that are disprovable from Popper’s point of view, although we did not discuss them here. However, as mentioned earlier, we can conclude that Chinese medicine is unscientific because its basic principles and representative treatments are unscientific. Therefore, we hope that this paper will help readers keep this in mind when choosing Western medicine or Chinese medicine to treat their illnesses in the future.
