The reductionist model that is based in scientific materialism is so ingrained in our culture, that I bet you don’t see it in all the places it exists.
All too often patients ask me what herb or homeopathic remedy is for “x” disease. That is reductionist thinking at work.
To be taken seriously as “science,” what is studied in the prevalent reductionist model is collapsed to systems of interwoven objects, all experienced as “it,” meaning something outside of ourselves that can be observed and is not personal.
By reducing everything to “it,” gone is the perspective of “I” and “We.” Absent is mind and spirit.
Only Physical Matters
The only accepted reality is the material universe. The only relevant experience is of the body and its sensations.
Randomized cross-over double blind placebo controlled studies assume that everything physical that can be observed physically is all that is going on.
Reductionism discounts our ability to take the perspective of another because that is a mental capacity. It dismisses experiential spiritual realities of formless awareness and contemplative states.
All is reduced to bodily experiences and whatever biochemistry is represented there.
Vitalism
Contrast that to the Naturopathic idea of Vitalism. There is a “vital force” animating everything alive, and this force is what gets deranged in illness.
The basis of this idea is that life is beneficial and is always seeking to have greater expression, integrating more and more in a balance.
All levels of being: body, mind and spirit can be experienced. (In fact, the spiritual perspective goes beyond experience as it is a witness to it.)
The medical view is that all levels are involved in imbalance, and therefore all levels are treated.
What about Integrative Medicine?
Test the stance of integrative medicine by how many perspectives it allows.
- Is spiritual experience reduced to brainwaves and molecules of emotion?
- Is mental experience reduced to deficient biochemical pathways in the brain or sets of observable behavior?
- Are herbs and nutrients substituted for drugs to fix a biochemical pathway?
Those are all workings of the reductionist model.
The table below contrasts these opposing views in terms of medicine.
Where do you stand? Were you aware of all these implications?
Reductionist |
Vitalist |
| The body is material only. Function is a result of physio-chemical laws. |
There is an energetic essence. The individual is self-determining. |
| Analytic source of knowledge. Experiments on dead tissue or live subjects in a lab setting. |
Observation for knowledge. Experience with living beings in a historical context. |
| Theory on how sick and healthy subjects function. | Experiences further elaborate natural law. |
| Health defined as the absence of objective signs and symptoms of disease. | Health defined as freedom from limitation on the physical, mental and emotional levels. State of well-being. |
| There are normal and abnormal conditions. If nothing can be found, a person is healthy. |
Health and disease are a continuum. Functioning can be optimal or compromised to a degree. |
| Problems in different parts of the body are not related. See a specialist for each. | Each symptoms is related to every other symptom, so the whole must be perceived. |
| Symptoms are indications that something is wrong. | Symptoms are the organism’s efforts to heal. |
| Look for the cause in external agents like infection or trauma or eating too much fat. | External agents are not causes, they are other effects. The internal predisposition makes the person susceptible. |
| Diagnosis by common symptoms that fit a generalized disease category. Statistical averages are important. |
Diagnosis by the person’s unique combination of symptoms and history. |
| There are a finite number of diseases. | The number of diseases is the number of imbalanced persons. |
| Treatment to stop the symptoms by weakening the pathological agent or numbing or cutting the disease part. | Treatment to fortify and stimulate life energy. |
| Usually large side effects. | Side benefits, treatment improves overall well-being. |
| Forceful treatment by destruction, inhibition or substitution since the body cannot do it. | Powerful treatment by martialing the innate healing power. |
| Patient passively receives treatment. | Patient is an active participant in healing. |
| New knowledge disproves old knowledge. | New experience and knowledge adds to existing knowledge. |
Where do you notice reductionism ingrained in your worldview?
Realize that you are not alone.
