The Cure Within

The New York Times Book Review tomorrow offers an informed but narrow-minded review of The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine, by Harvard professor Anne Harrington. The reviewer is Jerome Groopman, a physician and a staff writer for The New Yorker.

The review concludes: "Harrington shows us that, whatever science reveals about the cause and course of disease, we will continue to tell ourselves stories, and try to use our own metaphors to find meaning in randomness."

Can't tell whether it's Groopman's or Harrington's bias on display right there: "to find meaning in randomness." The western approach is to deny meaning because western scientists cannot measure meaning. That's their perpetual mistake. The universe appears random when looking at it through filters that cannot perceive meaning.