Metaphorical Thinking of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Its Features

Abstract

Metaphors are ubiquitous in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) thinking. This study focuses on the cognitive mechanism for combining TCM theories with conceptual metaphorical theories and analyzes how TCM explains its theories through metaphor. Metaphorical thinking of TCM (MTT) is explicitly defined as a proper integration of many key concepts in traditional Chinese philosophy and medicine, such as “correspondence between man and the universe,” “Yin-Yang and five-phase doctrines,” “Xiang-based analogy and categorization,” “syndrome differentiation and treatment,” “theory of visceral manifestation,” and “six climate exopathogens and seven emotions.” Three essential features of MTT are proposed: double mapping structures, including simple and categorization styles; double thinking centers, including entity-based and process-based thinking patterns; and double operational functions, including descriptive and inferential functions. Analysis of the complicated features of MTT is helpful not only for enriching the study of metaphors but also for revealing the original appearance of TCM, the real meaning of TCM theories, and providing a new way to develop TCM.