Philosophical Perspective Of Chinese And Western Medical Understanding Of The Origins Of Life And Its Essence, A Comparative Study

Life has been a sacred and mysterious topic since the ancient times, and for the past thousand years, human beings have never stopped searching for the origin and essence of life with the longing for a better understanding of our bodies and the pursuit of immortality. The origin of life ranks first among the 20 most important topics of the 20th century and is universally regarded as one of the top 10 greatest mysteriesinscience according to the Science Abstracts published by IEE.This paper attempts to offer a thorough analysis and literature research on the origin and essence of life from the aspects of both philosophy and medicine, and make a comparative study on Chinese and western philosophy and medicine. It aims to discover the interactive influences between Chinese and western philosophy and medicine and provide suggestions on their development in the future.Objectives:1. To unfold the similarities and differences of the cognition on the origin and essence of life between the Chinese and western philosophy, medicine and biology.2. To find out the philosophical groundwork on the combination of the Chinese and western medicine.3. To probe into the difficulties on the combination of the Chinese and western medicine, and advance some new thoughts.Methodology:1. Literature ResearchThis paper gives an overview of the different thoughts on the universe and life put forward by the significant western philosophers and philosophic schools, including Milesian School, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Atomist, Plato, Aristoteles, Epicurus, Stoics, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Karl Marx, Friedrich Von Engels, and the postmodernism, etc., and also reveals the understanding of the origin and essence of life from the view of biology and system biology, and finally explains how philosophy exerts influences on the development of medicine. At the same time, this paper conducts a research on the views of Zhou Yi: The Book of Changes and the three top philosophic schools, namely Confucianism, Daoismand Buddhism. And it elaborates on the opinions of the Traditional Chinese Medicine with the core value of The Inner Canon of Huang Di towards the origin and essence of life with the influence of traditional philosophy. Moreover, it summarizes the thoughts of the combination of the Chinese and western medicine and the systems medicine.2. Comparative StudyFrom the aspect of cognitive theory, this paper carries out a comparative study between Chinese and western philosophy on the primitive state of life, momentum for the origin of life, and the activity and cycling of life. It further on analyses the essence of the material and spiritual attributes of life from the view of Chinese and western philosophy. In addition, the paper does a comparison between the Chinese and western medicine and sums up the cognitions of the Chinese and western medicine towards the origin and essence of the human beings.Results and Conclusions:1. The basis of Confluence of the Chinese and western medicine exists.The Chinese and western philosophy resembles in terms of the cognitive contents and development history, and the development of human mind is infinite, which is the fundamental condition for the confluence of medicine and any other disciplines.The relationship between the western Reductionism and the Chinese Holism points out the direction of the future for the epistemology and methodology of the Chinese and western medicine. The era of system fits the trend of the development of humanmind and science and technology, but the Reductionism will never disappear, and it's a higher level of design thinking to do the reductionistic analysis under the guidance of system theory.2. Differences and obstacles of confluence between the Chinese and western medicine.The difference of ideology and the restrictions of technology are both the obstacles for the confluence of the Chinese and western medicine. However, the difference of philosophy is the far more important, and without new breakthroughs in philosophy, it will always be difficult for the confluence of the Chinese and western medicine.3. The development of Confluence of the combination of the Chinese and western medicine. It is the ultimate goal for the confluence of Chinese and western medicine to make the Reductionism and Holism well versed in each other, and it is also the development direction of the combination of the Chinese and western medicine.In conclusion, this paper indicates that the Chinese and western medicine can reach the same goal by different means, because both of their practitioners believe that there is a common ground where the Chinese and western medicine converge. It is believed this common ground will eventually be found, sooner or later, and the human beings will benefit from it.