Eastern Science: Providing a Different Perspective to Current Western Science - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages As the essay stresses Western science has finally begun to confirm that meditation practice literally and physically improves brain behavior. The Orient traditions that have much respect for the power of prayer have long known about this. As recently reported in the Wall Street Journal Science column, studies at the University of Wisconsin confirmed that "meditation, Buddhist or otherwise, might change the brain and, in particular, its emotional circuitry."
This paper compares the differences in the approaches of Western science and Eastern science in medicine, and discuss about recent changes. It leans heavily on the observations of McCall on yoga as a way of treating several maladies and on Lipton regarding convergence of the two sciences. Western science would go all out for what is scientific. Therefore, Western scientists are not expected to place too much weight on case histories. Medical school teaches that the so-called anecdotal evidence is notoriously unreliable and subject to false attributions, is with distorted memory, selects only the favorable cases, and deliberately manipulates. Eastern science only has a treasury of anecdotal evidences but which are hard to ignore. While Western science would go for standards, measuring, and parameters, Eastern science would work with wholes and not with parts. Some of yoga's aims, like equanimity, compassion, and enlightenment are said to be difficult if not impossible to quantify. ...Download file to see next pagesRead More