Physics/Biophysics 2018 ACCHS
Professor Spears
Sarah Donnelly
TCM & Physics
Of all the
fascinating material covered in this course, it was quantum physics which
really stuck with me. The impossibly small world which underlies our macro
world is governed by different laws, because when things get very small,
apparently they also get very weird. The laws which rule the quantum level
can't be applied to the world on our scale, and vice versa. It would like
assuming breathing air would be like breathing water. The different worlds just
work in different ways.
Some favorite weirdnesses:
•
Entangled particles, separated by the globe,
will simultaneously react even if only one particle is subjected to a stimuli.
•
Molecules can exist in more than one physical
state at the same time, temporarily stopping at one particular state when being
observed. Is it a wave? Particle? Depends on who's watching and what their
expectations are
•
All the rules in quantum theory apply no matter
if time is moving backwards or forwards. It doesn't really matter.
This doesn't
even touch on the basic weirdness of tiny particles hovering in hierarchical
formation around slightly larger particles (comparatively larger; all still
very very tiny), just chilling...just making up all matter as we experience it.
And that's the kicker. These strange laws in their tiny world are the building blocks for our
universe. At the fundamental level, we are beings made up of very very weird
laws. So says science. There's comfort in that. There's also comfort in the
fact that so much of quantum theory has been confusing and unanswerable since
it was first developed and has been pondered by the best minds of the world. So
much is '...and we have no idea why this happens...because...quantum
mechanics?'
These
phenomena are not merely strange, but also familiar, like getting a surprise
phone call from a long-lost someone you were thinking about not 2 seconds prior
to the ring. There is nothing is more familiar to us than uncertainty. In
physics, there's a whole principle named for it, because on the quantum level,
it's a fact of existence. Physics is uncertain - until it isn't. It
allows for, and even expects, for rules to be changed with the
emergence of new information. On our human-sized level, we do our best to avoid uncertainty,
especially in western (allopathic) medicine. Somewhere along the line, western
medicine forgot it began as a science and became a religion: there is a strict
hierarchy of power and velvet-rope access to that power; black and white
diagnoses; victim-blaming those who have a disease; and the infallible, godlike
role of the doctor above. Having experienced the sticky end of that lollipop, I
was seeking a different way of looking at sickness and health. I found
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).
This
medicine is complex, more complex than western medicine. It allows for
variation, it allows for individuality, for the affect of the observer, trains
us to roll with the unpredictable. And it necessarily has endless variability,
because the condition of living is endlessly variable. The medicine is
systematic and unpredictable, because living systems are unpredictable, with
innumerable variables. It treats what we see, what is underlying, and even
expects evolution of the condition – rather than absolute, cold diagnoses. The
language of Chinese Medicine is poetic, mystical, and sounds like nonsense when
I talk to laypeople. Your frustrated liver attacked your spleen, already
vulnerable and weak from thinking too much. Trying to understand something that
happens on a quantum level is also confusing to me. But metaphorical or not,
the explanation matters less when I see evidence of its action in front of my
eyes. TCM is at heart, a very practical medicine. If it doesn't work, don't use
it. If it does work, think forwards and backwards to figure out the parameters
of the cure.
How do we
approach uncertainty as students of TCM? Our medicine, our very studies, are
steeped in uncertainty. The only way we can study is by fully accepting
uncertainty. Kind of a culture shock. What do we study? Oh, everything. We are
handed several thick, sometimes poorly-translated, endlessly complex books and
told that the test will have 20 questions, and everything is fair game. Yes,
the books contradict one another, and yes, the books have several different
terms for the same concepts, and yes, the books take on a completely different
meaning depending on your teacher's teacher's interpretation...but that's life.
Literally, this is the study of life – and more interestingly – disease: what
happens when life doesn't go smoothly.
My 80 year
old housemate came into clinic with an injured knee – it was swollen – doubled
in size, and she had been icing it diligently for a week. She had an
appointment with her specialist the next day, because she was barely able to
hobble around for short periods before the extreme pain set in. I pulled out my
orthopedics textbook and asked her if she wanted to try bleeding on a key
point. She certainly did not, until I explained it wasn't really 'bleeding' as
she understood it, but just a quick insertion and removal of a needle on the
tip of her toe. On her uninjured thigh, I felt around for a specific
corresponding point. It should have been surprisingly tender, and it was. I
needled both the point on the leg and the toe. She got up from the table, a
little unsteady, but once the blood started moving, she was utterly shocked
that she felt about a 70% decrease in pain. Kind soul, she didn't really
believe it would work but was sweet enough to support me at school. Her doctor
didn't prescribe any medication nor procedure for what was now a mild annoyance
in her knee. The pain didn't return – and 2 months later she was hiking on
glaciers in Alaska.
These
phenomena are just plain weird! I like the word weird to describe both physics
and TCM, because it's a better fit than 'strange'. Strange is only mysterious
or confusing; weird adds a more mystical, magical association, and this feels
more accurate, Einstein even called it 'spooky'. TCM is weird because it's
based on an ancient system of medicine which has no context in our culture and
time. Yet as the concepts were explained to me – about how emotion,
environment, nutrition – all contribute to health, that daily awareness and
practices are superior medicine, or simply the fact that the my body WANTS to
heal itself – these ring true. There are deep truths I learn in this medicine
that aren't addressed western medicine. Like in quantum physics, different
rules and language apply, but the effects are still felt on our level. We see
frequent evidence of it and chalk it up to deja vu or coincidence. But what if
it's simply a set of laws governing something we don't yet have a definition
for? Or maybe we do, but no one believes in magic, really. Except every theory
in science was seen as magic until we created a better context for it. From Van
Leeuwenhoek's wee beasties to Copernicus' heliocentric solar system, explorers
had to fight tooth and nail to gain acceptance of the magic we know today as
facts.
Physics uses
classical western language to describe our world – the very large and the very
small. Physics actively seeks to describe how it all works together. It's
sometimes unpredictable, but its the best description we have so far. TCM is a
snapshot of the physics in ancient China. It describes the inner world, the outer
world, and the spirit world – how it all interacts. Both fields are living,
dynamic, evolving with new information and new applications. These disciplines
don't dispute the existence of other modalities – western medicine, string
theory, extraterrestrials – they are philosophies broad enough to encompass any
idea, as long as it works.
Sources:
“Quantum
Physics and Oriental Medicine.”All About Acupuncture,
1 Feb. 2008, www.acupuncturetoday.com/mpacms/at/article.php?id=31666.
“Emergence.”Wikipedia,
Wikimedia Foundation, 11 Aug. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence.
“3
Concepts Ancient Chinese Science Grasped, Modern Physics Just
Learning.”Www.theepochtimes.com,
12 June 2014,
www.theepochtimes.com/3-concepts-ancient-chinese-science-grasped-modern-physics-just-learning_726622.html.
“Inexplicable
Physics,” The Inexplicable Universe with Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Netflix, 2012
Season
1, Episode 4. Accessed 8/11/2018
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