| The combination of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Western Medicine (WM) is an important idea and a practical path in the developing of Chinese modern medicine.As the tendency that western thoughts advanced gradually to the orient, and WM spread to China and formed a new medical system which is different from TCM, there have been collision and conflict between the two medical systems, and TCM gradually lost its leading position and Western medicine became the main current instead.The two medical systems possess different theories, and yet, both are based on good curative effects. Therefore, accompanying with the collision and conflict, recognizing and rethinking of the relationship between the two medical systems will be the way to deal with it. This process included "merging WM with TCM" in the early period, "denying and abolishing TCM" in the Republic of China and "combining TCM with WM" after the foundation of new China, etc. But as one and a half century passed, mutual understanding and unity of the two medical theories is far to realization, and the combination of TCM and WM is not to fuse but to link. How to develop future medicine, especially TCM, is still a big problem which needs us to discuss seriously.The collision and conflict show that there lie radical differences between the two medical systems. In the philosophic point of view, these differences can be roughly summed up to some aspects as follows:1.Differences in ontologyWM holds that biological actions of human beings are the result of concrete materials (elements) and their whole movements, which lead to a positive medicine in the direction of microscopic researching. And TCM maintains that the occurrence of life depends on primordial Qi, which founds the life-movement systems on the theories of Yin-Yang and the five elements, and shapes a macroscopic, speculative and experiential medical system.2.Differences in methodologyBy the methods of reductionism, WM divides human body into smaller and smaller parts, successively finds formal and functional changes that decree and reflect man's physiological and pathological courses on different degrees, and then reduces biological phenomena to generally physical and chemical ones. But by the methods of the theory of primordial Qi, taking whole functional conditions of biological actions as objects of study, changing rules of these functional conditions as contents of study and interrelation betweenintervenient factors and functional conditions as threads of study, TCM shapes an unique system which TCM applies systematic methods to understand biological actions of human beings. With the theories of the present systematic science, this system has possessed its common characteristics.3.Differences in objects of studyThe process which WM understands objects of study went through two stages, namely, entire mastery of recognizing human life and imitation of human physiological and pathological changes by studying forms and structures of anatomic human body (not the living) and nonhuman animals (animal experiments). But for TCM, its objects of study and observation are never separated from biological actions of the living. The human body, as the same object of study, is thus differentiated to two studying aspects.4.Differences in differentiation of disease and syndromeDestroyed structures of human body return to normal state after according treatments. This course is to diagnose and treat sickness in WM. However. In TCM, it is to differentiate syndrome and treat sickness, and is to process clinical data obtained by the four methods of examination under the theories of TCM. "Sickness" and "syndrome", which are two entirely different expressions of disease, cannot replace and confirm each other.The above points definite that differences between TCM and WM are radical.In China, the two different medical theories, in terms of philosophy of science, are two different medical paradigms. According to the viewpoint of history, the two paradigms are not commensurable, and i...
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