Philosophy Of Natural Medicine: Knowledge Of Nature

Nature & Intelligibility

When we say we know something, we mean we know its nature and qualities (see hylomorphism, Ayurveda's philosophy of medicine).

Behavior, movement, and action are not substances (action cannot be weighed). Instead, a thing's actions and nature is immaterial and spiritual.

So everything is knowable by its spirit not by its material. When we say we know someone, we mean we know their spirit.

Spirituality is not the pursuit of mysticism or a mysterious realm beyond reality, it is the pursuit of what is intelligible or knowable in reality.

We have a tendency, since the scientific revolution, to think of material as knowable and spirits as mystical.

It is actually the other way around. It is material that is unknowable and mysterious because you can only experience a thing's nature, not its material.

Now God (aka pure act, true power, or the life giving principle) is sometimes called mysterious.

This is not fundamentally because God is unknowable, but because God is such an immense, simple whole, our minds can't grasp Him all at once. So we approach knowledge of God's nature by degrees, bits and pieces.

There are many things about God we do not know. There are many things we do not know about far away galaxies either.

Yet distant stars are fundamentally knowable given the right equipment. Similarly, as pure nature and act, God is the most knowable thing there is. Everything around us reflects fragments of God's love, specifically what He desired to create.

Knowledge Through Qualities

The various aspects of a thing's nature can only be known by its qualities, which in Sanskrit are called gunas (characteristic, or biocharacteristic). See biocharacteristcs.org for a complete list of qualities useful for medicine.

The gunas which form the bedrock of Ayurveda's medicine are simply the knowable (intelligible) characteristics of a thing's nature.

Each characteristic and nature has a name or word. A word simply names a nature or essence.

Since the life giving principle is the source of all natures, we say this principle is also the source of words - i.e. that the life giving principle 'speaks.'

So in many theological traditions it is common to say that it is "God's word" which moves, shapes, or creates reality, giving it its nature.

Which is More Real - Matter or Spirit?

For the last several hundred years, scientists have thought of the world as principally made of atoms, not the forces that shape reality.

Then particle physics revealed that atoms were not the atomic (i.e. indivisible) bedrock of reality. Nuclear bombs made it obvious atoms are divisible.

Instead, modern science now says the bedrock of the universe is the 7 Quantum Fields. But fields are not made of material. Everyone knows gravity doesn't have a body. Fields are natures, in fact laws of natures. They a forces, spirits.

With modern science we can see the older perspective is true - that nature is the atomic principal and infuses material with act, or life.

Consider the Empire State Building, a colossal structure that takes up an entire city block and is thousands of feet high. All the material of this building can fit inside a single teaspoon. The rest of this space is filled with structural forces - spirit!

If the material of the Empire State Building fits in a teaspoon, and the rest is forces or spirit, how can we say that material is primary, and forces secondary?

Rather, it is forces, not material, that make things "real". And being real simply means, having a nature.

The Origin of Species

Material is just an endless collection of protons, electrons, and neutrons - the same thing over and over again.

So if material is all the same, where do the real distinctions in reality come from?

Real distinctions do not come from material, but the forces that act on the material and give it a nature.

Forces shape and move material into something meaningful and specific.

Matter is essentially clay that must be shaped into something meaningful by forces.

Because forces form and shape material, they are also called forms. Forces are formative agents - they make things into what they are.

The origin of specific differences (the 'origin of species' to use the terminology of Darwin) are the forces or forms that act on and shape matter.

As forces are immaterial spirits, the origin of species is spiritual, not material. As was shown above, nature comes from activity, ultimately from Pure Act (God).

Note this fact does not impede or take away from, in any way, Darwin's theory of evolution - the possibility that the laws of nature (themselves immaterial, spiritual, and from God) cause mutations in organisms.

Are You a Realist or Materialist?

Realists are philosophers who believe that forces and forms make distinctions real and create different kinds of things - and that different things really exist.

Realists believe that forms don't merely include the laws of nature, but that there are forms for many substances, such as human beings.

In other words, realists believe there is such a thing as "human nature". Because realists believe that human forms are real, they also believe that perfections of nature really exists.

Materialists, on the other hand, are philosophers who believe matter is all there is, that forms are not real, and ultimately that what we see in reality is an illusion - nothing really exists as a separate entity.

Materialists say that all things are one, and that forms (spirits) and perfections of nature do not exist, because there is no standard, or designer, to define them.

You see the materialist worldview in yoga and Buddhism. And the realist worldview in Ayurveda, Greek philosophy, and western religions.

Materialists do not believe that things can be perfected, because they have no soul or prakruti (ideal nature). They just are whatever they are - with no intended being or purpose (aka 'final causes' do not exist).

We see Ayurveda does envision the true ideal of a person (their prakruti), and even helps a person achieve it. Ayurveda is fundamentally realism as it applies to medicine.

Questions for Thought

Do you believe that real differences in reality come from forces, or material?

What is the real cause of each thing being different?

Which is more real to you, subatomic particles, or the forms?

And who are you, really? Are you your nature (soul), or just a collection of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms?

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