2. Western Medicine Emphasizes Localized Understanding, While Chinese Medicine Emphasizes Holistic Understanding

2. Western Medicine Emphasizes Localized Understanding, While Chinese Medicine Emphasizes Holistic Understanding

As early as the 4th century BC, the great Greek anatomist Aristotle (384–322 BC) began to emphasize the localized structure of the human body and the localized morphological changes associated with disease. In the 2nd century AD, Galen established a series of experimental methods in physiology and anatomy, shifting Western medicine's focus from the whole to the parts. However, for many centuries thereafter, under conditions without large-scale industry, Western medicine, like all other aspects of society, remained shackled by religious dogma, and understanding of localized lesions stagnated. On the contrary, extensive speculative preaching gradually came to dominate the field of Western medical knowledge. Starting in the 16th century, as the Western world underwent economic transformation driven by large-scale industry, advances in production tools significantly enhanced Western medicine's ability to gain microscopic insight, while also strengthening its localized understanding. After being confined by religious dogma for more than ten centuries, Western medicine, through experimental research, rapidly made unprecedented progress simultaneously on both the microscopic and localized paths. Today, localized understanding in Western medicine almost constitutes the core of its diagnostic and therapeutic practices.

Chinese medicine, beginning with the Huangdi Neijing, established a relatively complete holistic perspective, highlighting the unity, interconnectedness, and integrity of the human body through the theories of yin-yang and the five elements' interactions. It holds that the various tissues and organs that make up the human body are structurally inseparable, functionally coordinated and mutually supportive, pathologically influential on one another, and therapeutically require holistic regulation and treatment. The Huangdi Neijing also particularly emphasizes the idea of "human beings corresponding to heaven and earth"—for example, in the "Ling Shu: Sui Lu" chapter it states: "Humans correspond to heaven and earth and are in harmony with the sun and moon," and in the "Su Wen: Wu Chang Da Lun" chapter it says: "One must first consider the seasonal qi and avoid disturbing the harmony of heaven and earth." These passages underscore that in understanding and treating disease, attention should be paid not only to the unity among all parts of the body but also to the unity between humans and their surrounding environment. Of course, while emphasizing the holistic perspective and the principle of human-heaven correspondence, the Huangdi Neijing also includes some discussions on localized anatomy—for example, in the "Ling Shu: Jing Shui" chapter it says: "For a person eight feet tall, the skin and flesh are visible externally and can be measured and palpated; after death, the organs can be dissected and examined. The hardness or softness of the internal organs, the size of the hollow organs, the amount of food consumed, the length of the meridians, the clarity or turbidity of the blood, the quantity of qi... all have specific numerical values." However, starting from the Han dynasty onward, China experienced a long period of feudal society, during which Confucian and Mencian doctrines held that "the body and hair are gifts from parents and must not be damaged" and that "exposing the chest or abdomen is improper and unseemly." This view severely constrained people's exploration of localized disease manifestations. Although there were occasionally pioneering physicians like Wang Qingren who dared to innovate and explore localized lesions, because Chinese medicine's development never had access to the conditions provided by large-scale industry, this spirit of innovation in localized exploration ultimately failed to develop further. What could truly flourish, instead, was the holistic perspective and the theory of human-heaven correspondence, which relied mainly on logical reasoning. Indeed, the "holistic perspective" advocated by the Huangdi Neijing has been continuously enriched and developed by generations of physicians, becoming increasingly thorough in its reasoning and more complete in its system. Any trace of localized thinking that once existed in the history of Chinese medicine has now been submerged in the vast ocean of holistic teachings.