The Ayurvedic physician as scientist

This paper is written in response to an article by Robin Horton in which Horton argues that 'traditional' systems of thought are relatively less open to external challenges than is modern scientific thought. Traditional systems of thought are (by definition) past-oriented; they consider truth to have been handed down from past sources and they are consensual rather than competitive in their attitude towards knowledge, Horton claims. Modern scientific thought is future-oriented; it is based upon an ideal of progress, and progress is attained through competition among rival theories or paradigms. According to Horton, the relatively greater openness of modern scientific epistemology accounts for the superior quality of the knowledge that modern science has acquired. In this paper it is argued that past-orientation is consistent with intellectual struggle and open competition among rival theories, as well as with openness to challenges from nature. Overall progress-orientation is not a necessary correlate of these approaches to the acquisition of knowledge. The first part of the paper described the thought and practice of a South Indian Ayurvedic physician. Although this physician employed a mode of gathering knowledge which was based upon a belief that full truth could be found only in the past, he recognized the provisionality of the knowledge he had acquired, and he struggled to adjust his own body of medical theory to the battery of counter-theories which constantly challenged it. He did not ignore external challenges, nor was he unconscious of their effect upon his thought. The second part of the paper illustrates this physician's process of theory-development through analysis of the texts of two interviews that took place between the physician and patients who visited him.