Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Chinese terms
- Introduction: ways of learning
- 1 The secret transmission of knowledge and practice
- 2 Qigong and the concept of qi
- 3 The personal transmission of knowledge
- 4 Interpreting a classical Chinese medical text
- 5 The standardised transmission of knowledge
- 6 Teaching from TCM texts
- Discussion: styles of knowing
- Appendix: Curriculum for TCM regular students and acumoxa and massage specialists
- Glossary of medical and philosophical terms
- References
- Indexes
Introduction: ways of learning
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Chinese terms
- Introduction: ways of learning
- 1 The secret transmission of knowledge and practice
- 2 Qigong and the concept of qi
- 3 The personal transmission of knowledge
- 4 Interpreting a classical Chinese medical text
- 5 The standardised transmission of knowledge
- 6 Teaching from TCM texts
- Discussion: styles of knowing
- Appendix: Curriculum for TCM regular students and acumoxa and massage specialists
- Glossary of medical and philosophical terms
- References
- Indexes
Summary
Chinese medicine is grounded in medical practice and in texts – in experience and in its transmission from one generation to another. It changes over time as its social and historical contexts change, but these changes do not occur uniformly. This book explores variations of key terms in Chinese medicine and examines ways in which they are understood in different social contexts. In particular, it concerns the extent to which the understanding and social significance of these terms depend on the way in which they are transmitted and learnt.
Why should the understanding of specific concepts depend on the way in which they are learnt? Knowledge is generally assumed to depend on what one has learnt, regardless of how one has learnt it. This study contests the idea that there are contents of knowledge that can be transmitted and learnt regardless of how the actors involved, in their social relationship to each other, relate to knowledge. It shows that styles of knowing differ according to one's perception of and attitudes to knowledge, and that the meaning of the same term may change as the ways change in which one perceives, expresses, uses, credits, orders, and applies knowledge. The underlying question in this book is thus how far the way in which one learns these terms determines the way in which one knows them or, simply, how different ways of learning relate to different styles of knowing.
Modes of transmission
Central to this study are the ways in which Chinese medical knowledge and practice were transmitted and learnt in three different social settings.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Transmission of Chinese Medicine , pp. 1 - 20Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999