> Stated differently, traditional wisdom may be true or false but its
> practitioners have no rational way of knowing which. They accept or reject
> claims based on tradition and belief. Science, on the other hand, not only
> can disprove itself, but attempts to do so are an integral part of its basic
> methodology. Therefore, traditional wisdom/medicine etc. has a much greater
> potential for abuse - it simply lacks sufficient verification mechanisms.
I don't know if traditional wisdom/medicine -- whatever that is -- has any verification mechanisms. But that pre-modern medicine came up with anything effective ever, except by sheer chance pairing of diseases and cures, begs the question of how such treatments were developed. Wouldn't it be reasonable that they were developed by trial and error -- Feynman's "guess and test" -- that is to say that they were practising what we'd recognize as science?
> As to your portrayal of the "ideology of western science" - I am sorry, but
> this is a caricature, a straw man. I challenge you to find a scientist,
> medical or otherwise, whose stated research objective is "to disarticulate
> the body and treat one part as if it existed in isolation from the other
> parts," let alone "essentialize and universalize the subject of medicine."
They may not state that as the research objective, but that doesn't exclude that as what happens. And "essentialize and universalize" sounds an awful like what scientists try for when developing general theories. I think finding deeper connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena is a good thing and exciting, unless it impedes your understanding or leads you down false trails. Like treating women with drugs that have been tested only on men, for example.
-- Andy