The Examination of the Causes of Interest in Complementary Medicine in Recent Decades

Borzou Ghaderi

Introduction
For many people, the astounding growth of complementary therapies, the establishment of related clinics, the cultivation of medicinal herbs, and even the acknowledgment of these methods by doctors, researchers, and global health communities remain unclear. On the other hand, some might ask why these treatment methods were abandoned in the first place, only to be revived later. Following the Renaissance and technological advancements, classical healing, based on diagnosis and treatment through humor and temperaments, was deemed unscientific and gradually disappeared from the global medical stage. Now, after several centuries, we are witnessing its revival and expansion. Therefore, it is reasonable to ask: why did it go, and why did it return?

 

The Modern Classification of Sciences
The scientific achievements of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries shattered many ancient beliefs about natural sciences [1]. This wave of doubt and uncertainty led scholars to seek new foundations and standards for evaluating the value of knowledge. In the industrial age, only those sciences that could control natural forces and expand humanity’s power over nature were deemed valuable. As a result, inventions such as the compass, the printing press, and gunpowder were considered the only worthy legacies of the ancient world. During the scientific revolution, efforts were made to revive the scientific method and rational understanding to dominate nature. In other words, the scientific Renaissance marked an era of human centrism, positioning mankind as the master of nature. Descartes, as the father of modern philosophy and thought, reclassified sciences [2], likening human knowledge and industries to a tree where the roots represent metaphysics, the trunk natural sciences, and the fruits medicine, mechanics, and ethics. This metaphor reflects the comprehensiveness and ultimate goal of knowledge, which is to bear fruit—namely, health for the body and mind through medicine and ethics, and the tools necessary for human dominance over nature through mechanics. While medicine, ethics, and mechanics had been subjects of study in the past, Descartes’ unique approach was his focus on quantifying qualitative realities.
From Descartes’ perspective, a scientific proposition had to be quantitatively measurable. Consequently, the science of ethics never received the full analytical treatment he desired, as no tools were available to quantify emotions. For instance, we can use a thermometer to measure heat and turn the qualitative warmth into a quantitative concept. However, if we cannot convert some qualities into numerical terms, they cannot be considered scientific concepts. Thus, one of the greatest challenges to traditional medicine was this emphasis on quantification, or what Descartes called “universal mathematics.” In traditional methods, we attribute qualities like warmth, coldness, dryness, and moisture to food, water, and air. However, no precise devices can determine the heat of pepper or the coldness of lettuce, or compare them to ginger or cucumber. Therefore, such a medical system is not based on science as Descartes understood it.
On the other hand, Descartes viewed the body and psyche as two distinct substances, each self-sufficient for its own existence. As a result, medicine and ethics, along with psychology, were seen as entirely separate fields, with no need to explore their interrelations. In other words, treating the body, mind, and psyche were considered distinct processes. However, in traditional medicine, the body and psyche are inseparable. While Descartes’ views have long since faded in the realms of philosophy and physics, their influence still lingers in the broader field of medicine. Beyond Descartes, the opinions of many other scientists from the technological era also contributed to the decline of traditional medicine, though a detailed discussion of these views is beyond the scope of this text.

 

The Scientific Revolution
In the history of modernity, the simultaneous growth of technology and human dominance over nature led to the loss of humanity’s central place in the universe. Copernicus and Galileo showed that Earth, the ground on which we stand, is not the center of the universe but a small speck in an infinite cosmos. Darwin demonstrated that humans are not the pinnacle of evolution, but a step in the evolutionary process that may still have many stages ahead. Freud explained that the “I” is not truly what we think it is, and that behind our moral and devout exterior, there may be a hidden wild animal. With subsequent scientific advancements and the emergence of the theory of general relativity and other modern ideas, the philosophy of physics found itself at the threshold of relativism. Among the various theories regarding the analysis of science and its evolutionary stages, the ideas of Thomas Kuhn garnered the most attention.
According to Kuhn, conventional science is governed by a broad, interconnected set of initial assumptions known as “paradigms” [3]. These paradigms are the standard models that govern conventional science and determine our perspectives on research, studies, and even the scope and boundaries of our questions and uncertainties. In modern medical philosophy, where rigid walls are drawn between body and mind, the types of explanations we seek, the questions we are allowed to ask, and the legitimate solutions are all pre-defined. For instance, acupuncture and Marma Therapy in Ayurveda [4] refer to circuits and meridians that clearly impact health, yet they do not fully correspond to the nervous system.
Traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurveda propose the existence of a subtle energy field governing health, which may serve as a mediator between body and mind. Although research and studies on this topic may have been published in scientific circles, we still analyze health within the confines of medical paradigms shaped in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Consequently, we view such hypotheses as oddities, until the entire framework of conventional science changes and breaks its paradigms. Until then, these hypotheses, no matter how brilliant their results, will remain on the periphery.
In his renowned work, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” Kuhn explains the process of transformation from one scientific structure to another as a revolutionary process. According to him, when the paradigms of conventional science can no longer address the ambiguities arising within the scientific community, a crisis ensues, inevitably leading to a revolution. This revolution replaces the old structure with a new one, whose paradigms are capable of resolving the previous problems.

 

(Pre-science) Conventional science → Crisis → Revolution → New conventional science

 

This cycle continues throughout history. For Kuhn, the term “revolution” refers to a rapid and somewhat unexpected change that shatters the worldview of conventional science and replaces its paradigms with new ones. Scientific revolutions, like political ones, are powerful and decisive [5].
At the end of one of the most valuable structures governing medical science, which brought extraordinary advances in medical technology, diagnostic tools, epidemic control, public health, and surgical methods, we are also faced with the limitations of focusing solely on the body. These limitations include the inability to provide a comprehensive treatment system that considers both body and mind as a whole “body-mind”, the side effects of chemical medications sometimes worse than the diseases themselves, and the failure to define concepts like illness, health, death, and life in a precise manner. This has led to unresolved questions about the role of the balance of human existential forces in vulnerability or lack thereof [6].
Complementary Medicine Methods
One of the terms that has been mistakenly popularized is “alternative medicine”. In fact, only by logically transitioning from the current medical structure to a more comprehensive one capable of solving today’s medical challenges will true alternative medicine emerge in its precise form. However, the reality is that so far, we have only become familiar with some of the problems and limitations of modern medicine, and, in contrast, we have revived the rich philosophy and some positive, inspiring aspects of traditional medical methods. These revivals can herald the dawn of alternative medicine, but we are still within the usual structure of medicine, which reached its peak at the end of the nineteenth century. For this reason, many international health and medical organizations recommend that, until we reach a more comprehensive medical structure, it would be suitable to use traditional and modern healing methods within the framework of conventional medicine as “complementary medicine”.
The most authentic of these methods include Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda from India, and Traditional Iranian-Islamic Medicine, which are ancient and prominent schools of medicine whose educational and healing structures have been preserved. Additionally, some modern systems, such as homeopathy, also play a role.
Many other healing methods are either not yet fully understood, such as ancient Persian and Egyptian medicine, or are a combination of the three aforementioned systems, like Tibetan healing, which blends Indian and Chinese traditions. Without a doubt, in-depth investigation of these healing traditions can be highly inspirational in various fields, such as medical philosophy, finding new models of health and disease, pharmacy, and more. Interestingly, these so-called ancient methods, in managing and treating some disorders and diseases, are not only not inferior to modern and conventional medicine but sometimes offer more evident advantages, including lower costs, the absence of chemical medications, and other benefits.
Here, it is important to note three points:
A) Although, based on Kuhn’s scientific hypothesis, scientific revolutions drive the evolution and growth of all scientific fields, the reality is that the caravan of science does not always have an evolutionary process. As Lakatos correctly observed, “Every theory is pursued both due to its inherent potential and its alignment with social interests and needs”. Therefore, the growth of collective awareness and the ability to guide the caravan of sciences toward a rational destination is of primary importance.
B) The conventional medical approach to complementary methods has led to the emergence of dozens of confused and ambiguous techniques, such as color therapy, gemstone therapy, aromatherapy, and others. While it is undisputed that colors and scents have an impact on our minds and emotions—requiring no further scientific research—the critical point is that a doctor knows when and how to use medication or surgery. However, simplifying complementary therapies for ease of research while forgetting foundational structures like Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Iranian medicine, which deeply analyze when and why to use each method, turns these methods into hobbies for those with extra time. This superficial approach does not clarify the therapeutic value or position of these methods in the healing process. Overall, this is one of the dangers of education: we sometimes get so caught up in specialization that we neither understand the ancient traditions nor have the conventional scientific framework to apply them. Nietzsche eloquently described this in his thoughts on “Untimely Meditations”: “The learned specialist is nothing more than a factory worker, spending his entire life turning a specific screw or shifting a particular tool. Meanwhile, the general framework of culture increasingly falls into the hands of journalists who, serving the immediate needs of the day, take on the mantle of geniuses”.
C) Throughout the twentieth century, valuable theories have been proposed regarding changing the health model in medicine, such as George Engel’s [7] biopsychosocial model, which, undoubtedly, will only dominate the medical community and organize scientific research on a broader scale once we have overcome major obstacles, including the factor mentioned in point A. Moreover, although these hypotheses are widely accepted by many modern therapists and researchers, they lack practical and applicable methods for field studies of body, mind, and society. Therefore, we still do not have a practical method or operational system that simultaneously evaluates and analyzes health in body, mind, and environment, other than the elemental health model proposed by Eastern traditional medicine [8].

References:
1. Pauli, W., & Silz, P. (2022). The influence of archetypal ideas on the scientific theories of Kepler. In The interpretation of nature and the psyche (pp. 147-212). Routledge.
2. Descartes, R. (1984). The philosophical writings of Descartes (Vol. 2). Cambridge University Press.
3. Kuhn, T. (1962). The nature and necessity of scientific revolutions, from the structure of scientific revolutions. The Philosophy of Science, MIT Press, Cambridge, USA, 148-157.
4. Frawley, D., Ranade, S., & Lele, A. (2003). Ayurveda and marma therapy: Energy points in yogic healing. Lotus Press.
5. Thomas, K. (1977). Objectivity, value judgment, and theory choice. Thomas Kuhn, The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change, 320-339.
6. Meadows, D., & Randers, J. (2012). The limits to growth: the 30-year update. Routledge.
7. Frankel, R. M., Quill, T. E., & McDaniel, S. H. (Eds.). (2003). The biopsychosocial approach: Past, present, and future. university Rochester press.