Abstract

This study explores the epistemological role that correlative language plays in traditional Chinese medicine, with the central claim that, with the language of yin-yang and the five elements, traditional Chinese medicine is able to attain functionally and qualitatively accurate meanings, which provide the basis for diagnosis and treatment. It also explores how traditional Chinese medicine can learn from modern Western medicine and contribute to future medical science in its further development. ;Drawing on J. T. Fraser's concept of an evolving, nested hierarchy as well as on Alex Argyros' and Fred Turner's thinking, this dissertation develops the hypothesis that meaning comes from the interplay between truth and goodness. It distinguishes between truth-oriented science and goodness-oriented science, and classifies traditional Chinese medicine as a goodness-oriented science, which, described correlatively and metaphorically, contrasts with modern Western medicine, a truth-oriented science described with literal language. ;This dissertation further proposes an evolutionary epistemology and evolutionary view of language, which boil down to the continuous cross-level movement from verification to falsification and again to verification. While it examines the basic theories of traditional Chinese medicine and recognizes the value of Chinese medical language, this dissertation, with its evolutionary perspective, reveals the weakness of the correlative language as employed in Chinese medicine, which lies in the indirect verification of correlative description, as contrasts with the direct verification of literal description that explains the rapid development of Western science. This has to do with the Chinese emphasis on entire function and practical effect, as contrasts with the Western interest in particular structure and articulate meaning. And this indicates the direction for the future development of Chinese medicine and medical language. ;With Fraser's perspective, this study presents the language reform that is going on both in China and in the West; while Chinese physicians have started their program to transform Chinese medical language into a literal, analytic and articulate language, Western scientists are working towards a new synthetic, functional language. This points to the new medical science and medical language, which, informed by Fraser's concept of an evolving, nested hierarchy, accommodates medical knowledge and languages specific to different levels, as reflects the spirit of future science