Theme Day TCM Research EN

Bridging Paradigms: TCM Research Day in Celebration of Prof. Friedrich Wallner’s 80th Birthday
 
The Research Day at the TCM Congress Rothenburg serves a dual purpose this year: as a platform to explore cutting-edge research in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and as a special symposium to celebrate the 80th birthday of Prof. Friedrich Wallner. 
By developing Constructive Realism, Prof. Wallner has made groundbreaking contributions to the field of epistemology and profoundly influenced the understanding and integration of Eastern and Western medical traditions, making this event both a scholarly and personal tribute.
This unique gathering brings together scholars to discuss the intersections of TCM and Constructive Realism, with a focus on relationality, metaphorical reasoning, and the subjective nature of health. Topics include reinterpretations of classical TCM texts, the philosophical and cultural constructs of meridians, and the methodological innovation of "strangification," which emphasizes the contextual and experiential dimensions of healing. 
As both a research forum and a celebration, the event highlights Prof. Wallner's legacy in fostering cross-cultural dialogue and innovative approaches to medicine. By blending scholarly discussion with an anniversary spirit, the day underscores the enduring relevance of TCM's holistic philosophy and its potential to enrich contemporary therapeutic practices.

Friedrich Wallner

What practitioners of TCM should know: the theoretical structure and methodology of TCM

Constructive realism demonstrates that Western concepts of healing are one-sided or incomplete. The fundamental difference from Western medicine is that the individual as a whole is not reduced to an object. Instead, connections in thought are used to reveal the unnoticed underlying factors of illness. This approach is based on a methodology we call "strangification."
Strangification is a linguistic method that makes the limits of validity of a definition or insight visible. This methodology does not rely on a predefined ideal state but instead reveals multiple pathways to healing. Unlike Western medicine, the goal is not to restore the diseased body to a state defined by medical research but to interpret it against the backdrop of multiple episodes of bodily behavior.
The fundamental distinction lies in the fact that the health of the body is not defined in an objective sense but emerges from a multitude of subjective experiences.

Keekok Lee

Constructive Realism and Coloniality: Assessing the Relationship in the Context of Acupuncture.
 
Constructive Realism/CR, in my understanding, can be defended as a middle path between inflexibility under objectivity in reasoning on the one hand and a too fluid flexibility under some forms of relativism on the other. But how does this attractive middle path fare under the concept of Coloniality? Coloniality is the view that what counts as “proper” knowledge is what can be authenticated by the modern Western paradigm of scientificity. We find the “marriage” of CR with Coloniality in the work of the Chinese scientist in biophysics, Zhu Zongxiang when he subjected the meridian system/jingluo which underpins Chinese medicine to biophysical investigation and found that the jingluo is thereby authenticated. The conclusion that CR is hand-in-glove with Coloniality, however, is not inevitable provided CR is re-interpreted widely to authenticate any system of knowledge, such as Chinese medical knowledge, provided it lays down certain clear rules of procedure for diagnosing a medical condition, for treating such a condition once diagnosed and for assessing the efficacy or otherwise of the treatment in terms of a cure or amelioration of the condition originally diagnosed. Chinese medicine does provide such rules for diagnosis, treatment and cure as Zhu holds. The ball is then in the CR court. Is CR willing to buy this widened interpretation? 

Andrea Mercedes Riegel

Approaching Classical Texts on Chinese Medicine through Constructive Realism

Chinese medicine is a construct, a self-contained microcosm based on the idea of the unity of heaven, earth, and humanity. The complex theories of Chinese medicine are built upon this concept of the unity of these three dimensions, employing metaphor and analogy as its primary methods. The foundational written reference is the Daoist-Confucian influenced Book of Changes, which perfectly reflects this idea, particularly through the symbolism of the eight trigrams, their arrangement in the Hetu and Luoshu diagrams, and the 64 hexagrams.
Understanding the complex interrelations within the structure of Chinese medicine and the reasoning behind its diagnostic and therapeutic approaches requires appropriate translations of the classical texts. Neither sinologically precise translations nor those based solely on practical experience without a sinological foundation are sufficient. What is needed is a deep immersion into the culture of this medicine and an understanding of the nature of this construct.
The lecture will explore the potential contribution of constructive realism to the understanding of these texts.

Song Bingxin

The Modern Expression of Traditional Acupuncture Theory under the Perspective of Constructive Realism: A Case Study of "Meridians"

The traditional acupuncture theory, originating in ancient times, is deeply imprinted with Chinese cultural characteristics. Influenced by factors such as historical context, cultural differences, and modes of thinking, the interpretation and study of traditional acupuncture theory today is challenging and previous Western Natural Science researchers have even questioned the theory of meridians due to its inability to identify a material basis for the meridians. Constructive Realism, which focuses on the cultural assumptions behind scientific theories, offers support for the rationality of traditional acupuncture theory's existence. Taking "meridians" as an example, I will analyze the references to "meridians" in classical Chinese medical texts by considering the context, the surrounding text, and Chinese traditional philosophical thought, explore the essential meaning of "meridians" and attempt a transformation in linguistic expression to promote better communication between Eastern and Western medical traditions.

Florian Beißner

Tracing the Invisible: Cultural Constructs of Meridians and Subjective Body Experiences

The meridians of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) represent cultural constructions that merge medical and philosophical frameworks. This study examined how modern individuals with anatomical knowledge reconstruct these meridians by interpreting historical texts from the Han Dynasty. Participants, informed about the historical and cultural context, were tasked with mapping the described anatomical pathways onto a body outline without being explicitly told that these were TCM meridians.
The texts, sourced from three archaeological sites (Mawangdui, Zhangjiashan, Laoguanshan), were assigned to groups of 15 participants each. The resulting drawings were analyzed for patterns and individual differences, highlighting how linguistic and cultural constructs shape reconstructions. These findings were further compared to subjective accounts of linear sensations, such as those observed in therapeutic settings, where clients describe bodily experiences along specific pathways.
This study aligns with the perspective where the health of the body emerges from subjective experiences rather than objective standards. By interpreting meridian pathways as episodes of bodily behavior rather than fixed anatomical structures, the research connects historical models of health to the dynamic, individual sensations encountered in contemporary therapeutic contexts. This presentation, grounded in constructive realism, explores how such cultural models bridge historical and modern understandings of the body, offering insights into the interplay of language, culture, and perception in defining health.

Jan Brousek

Relationality - The Methodological Common Ground of Constructive Realism and Chinese Medicine
 
Approaching Chinese Medicine (CM) from a Western perspective is fundamentally difficult for many reasons, not least because of its paradigm of “relationality”, which is constitutive in CM. This is evident, apart from the importance of a resonant doctor-patient relationship, for example, in the fact that the effect of acupuncture therapy and herbal therapy cannot be understood from the sum of effects of individual acupuncture points and medical herbs. Rather, is it their interaction that is able to unfold the effect attributed to a prescription. However, this circumstance has been insufficiently incorporated into research on CM to date. This is simply due to the fact that relational thinking can hardly - if at all - be reconciled with the axioms of Newtonian science that has been formative for the biomedical approach up to now.
The Viennese School of “Constructive Realism” (CR) and its methodology of “strangification” offers the possibility of a therapy for such an “autistic” scientific approach. Strangification is a method to relate the constructs of reality that arise from scientific action, such as medical practice (e.g. diagnoses, prognoses and therapeutic concepts), in order to reveal the conditions under which a scientific or medical statement can claim validity or appear meaningful at all.
Based on such a concept of "relational commitment" Western-trained scientists and physicians get enabled to practice thinking in relations in order to approach CM in a way that is adequate to the paradigm of relationality.