On Beauty in Math and Medicine

What Einstein and a 2,000 year old herbal tome have in common

Mathematicians: keen seekers after beauty. If that's not what comes to mind when you hear "math," consider: in the higher echelons of the discipline, where it's not about solving for x but extending the reach of human understanding through conjecture and proof, beauty is considered a reliable signpost that one is on the right track.  

Physicists are also obsessed with beauty. So much so that they’re apt to judge unfavorably any theory that fails to unfold elegantly and symmetrically from first principles (case in point, the jerry-rigged contraption that is the Standard Model of particle physics). Of his theory of general relativity, Einstein famously claimed it didn’t require experimental evidence: it was, he said, “so beautiful it had to be true.” Einstein happened to be right. But even so, physical theories do ultimately have to stand up to the data. They have to work.

Medicine is like this, too. Clinical results are what count in the end. But beauty is not merely incidental. It’s the telltale aroma that lets us know we’re in the vicinity of truth.

This piece is dedicated to unpacking some of the ways that the beautiful shows up in South and East Asian medicine. Specifically, in the realm of medical theory.

Let me say first that technique can be beautiful, too, and fully deserving of an article of its own. It’s beautiful to watch a master’s hands at work, to see a patient's complexion change right there on the table as their pain lifts. But my focus here is the beautiful ideas that make for those beautiful results.

Here’s a small sampling from the treasure box.

Digestive Fire - The idea of digestion as cooking process is common to most medical systems, and though not emphasized in modern medicine, it's implicit when we speak of "burning calories." Asian medical traditions take this intuitive idea of a fire in the belly and run with it, leading to a proliferation of therapies for digestive and metabolic complaints. At the core of them all is the elegant, economical idea of regulating the burn: not too hot, not too cold, the fire must be well contained, appropriately fed and protected from winds. As an Ayurvedic saying has it, "agnih ayuh," fire is life, and there's beauty in ideas that teach us how to tend that fire.

Five Phases - Sometimes called Five Element Theory, the five phases are more like steps of a process. They're easily understood in relation to the seasons. Wood is like spring, opening and spreading outward. Fire is like summer, flourishing and expansive. Earth ripens and hangs, sweet and heavy. Metal cuts and falls with autumn's blade. Water brings it all back under in winter's slumber, until Wood comes and shakes things up again. Now consider how each phase-element is not only birthed and birthing, but also how each controls another. Water, of course, controls Fire. In the same way, Metal controls Wood (an axe chopping a tree), Earth controls Water (damming a river), Fire controls Metal (melting a blade) and Wood controls Earth (roots penetrating the ground). Thus the five phase-elements form a dynamic system, with each element in living relation to all four of the others at once. When you begin to recognize the affinities of bodily organs and tissues with the elements, then things get really rich. Entire disease processes can be understood by way of elemental dynamics, as for instance the anxiety and palpitations that can result when uncontrolled water (due to weak earth) assaults the body's chief seat of fire, the heart.

Herbal Formulation - If you look at the label of a sleep tincture in the co-op aisle, you're likely to find a bunch of herbs reputed to be good for sleep thrown together. That's a bit like bottling honey, maple syrup, sugar and agave syrup and calling it a "super sweetener"--a recipe that's not necessarily more than the sum of its parts. By way of contrast, classical formulas from the Chinese tradition (also widespread in Taiwan, Korea, Japan and beyond) are like works by Da Vinci: elegantly proportioned, economical, difficult to improve upon. Take the remedy that's used for the type of anxiety and palpitations mentioned above, caused by weak earth failing to control water, which floods upward to compromise the fire of the heart. Four simple medicinals are used in a specific proportion to strengthen the earth phase and control water. No need to throw together a bunch of "anti-anxiety" herbs when the underlying patho-dynamics are understood.

So fine-tuned is the herbal system presented in works like the Han Dynasty Shang Han Lun that adjusting a single ingredient upwards or downwards by a few grams can change the scope and application of an entire formula. Possible because the brilliant minds and expert physicians who composed these recipes understood in detail how to juxtapose medicinals, balancing opposites and buffering less desirable qualities, to create a vehicle capable of taking the body from one state to another. They still work beautifully today.