Invisible Rainbow: A Physicist’s Introduction to the Science behind Classical Chinese Medicine

275 Pages·2016·6.23 MB·English

by  Changlin Zhang

Praise for Invisible Rainbow
“In Invisible Rainbow, Changlin Zhang not only opens the gates to a scientific understanding of Classical
Chinese Medicine, but he also opens doors to break out of the prison of naturalistic paradigms of our
Western world, paradigms that reduce man to human capital, human material, and biochemical machine.
Medically, the human material has to be kept functioning as long as possible to secure maximum medical
and economic profit. As a biophysicist, Zhang opens our eyes to all the invisible, and our ears to all the
inaudible reality that surrounds us, which we like to exclude from our views in order to keep our world as
easy to control and grasp as we like it.”
—HANS-JOACHIM HAHN, FOUNDER AND ORGANIZER OF PROFESSORENFORUM, AN ORGANIZATION OF
GERMAN PROFESSORS
“Many people will enjoy reading this book and benefit from it in various aspects.”
—RUIXIANG CHEN, PROFESSOR AT BEIJING UNIVERSITY OF CHINESE MEDICINE
“The author, Professor Changlin Zhang, describes the acu-points and acu-meridians through a physics lens,
with vivid language, proficient knowledge, and profound insight into modern physics.”
—GUOZHEN CHEN, PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS, DONGWU UNIVERSITY, TAIWAN
INVISIBLE RAINBOW
A PHYSICIST’S INTRODUCTION TO THE SCIENCE BEHIND
CLASSICAL CHINESE MEDICINE
Changlin Zhang
with Jonathan Heaney
FOREWORD BY HARTMUT KAPTEINA
North Atlantic Books
Berkeley, California
Copyright © 2016 by Changlin Zhang. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—
without the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.
Published by
North Atlantic Books
Berkeley, California
Cover photo: ritterdoron/iStock
Book design by Nicole Hayward
Figure 3.3 by United States Air Force Senior Airman Joshua Strang (public domain)
Figure 13.2 by Hans Nilsson, Kungliga Opera, used under Creative Commons license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)
Figure 13.6 by Paata Vardanashvili from Tbilsi, Georgia (Swan Lake) and used under Creative Commons license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)
Invisible Rainbow: A Physicist’s Introduction to the Science behind Classical Chinese Medicine is sponsored and published by the
Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences (dba North Atlantic Books), an educational nonprofit based in Berkeley, California,
that collaborates with partners to develop cross-cultural perspectives, nurture holistic views of art, science, the humanities, and healing,
and seed personal and global transformation by publishing work on the relationship of body, spirit, and nature.
North Atlantic Books’ publications are available through most bookstores. For further information, visit our website at
www.northatlanticbooks.com or call 800-733-3000.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zhang, Changlin, author. | Heaney, Jonathan, author.
Invisible rainbow : a physicist’s introduction to the science behind classical Chinese medicine / Changlin Zhang, with Jonathan
Heaney.
LCCN 2015049047 (print) | LCCN 2016003076 (ebook) | ISBN 9781623170103 (print) ISBN 1623170109 (print) | ISBN 9781623170110
(ebook)
LCSH: Medicine, Chinese. | Acupuncture. | Electromagnetism—Physiological effect.
LCC R601 .Z6852 2016 (print) | LCC R601 (ebook) | DDC 610.951—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015049047
To the One who wrote the book with infinite pages and let me read a few of them.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Max Reinhard in Germany, who sponsored the research project for more than
fifteen years with incredible patience, tolerance, and confidence.
Hartmut Kapteina, professor of music and music therapy. My closest research
partner and dear friend. He also wrote the beautiful foreword for this book.
Hans-Joachim Hahn, who is dedicated to rebuilding the soul and the spirit of
universities in Europe and contributed greatly to getting the German version of
this book published.
Jian-Ping Chu in Switzerland, Bisong Guo in Scotland, and Dan Jiang in
England—doctors of Chinese medicine, who gave me a lot of help with
discussions and encouragement.
Valerie Luff, a nurse who spent her career in missionary hospitals in Nepal,
India, and Bangladesh. I met her when I was a visiting scholar in the University
College London. She is my godmother and my real spiritual mother; particularly
as I lost my own physical and spiritual mother in China when I was a teenager.
Ding-Zhong Li, professor of Chinese medicine in Beijing. A pioneer of
modern scientific research into acupuncture. In 1996, he nominated me to be the
leading scientist of the national project on meridian research.
Ke-Hsueh Li, one of a few theoretical physicists who truly, deeply understood
the profound background of modern physics. My teacher during postgraduate
studies at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, from 1978 to 1981, and my
research supervisor in Germany from 1991 to 1994. The first person to hear my
idea of electromagnetic standing waves inside human bodies, many important
experiments in this book were designed in accordance with his advice.
Elisabeth Reschat, Dietrich Stoeckl, Thomas Lastring for their work
translating, refining, and improving the German version of this book as well as
obtaining the copyright permissions for a number of figures in this book.
Hans-Juergen Stoeckmann, a professor at Marburg University, for kindly
checking the statements from the viewpoint of physics in the German version.
Peter Weinberg, a professor at Hamburg University, gave many constructive
suggestions for this book, and his doctoral student Christof Ziaja, who found a
new statistical distribution with our coherence meter (or biometer) in their sleep
lab.
Xiang-Yang Zhao in Germany, a brilliant young scholar and physicist who
assisted the Chinese translation by providing many critical and constructive
opinions.
Zhong-Shen Liu, my gifted, old and dear friend at the Heilongjiang University
of Traditional Chinese Medicine, for further refining the Chinese version.
My beloved family, my wife, Xinger (Angela), and our son, Zhiliang (Albert).
Our son was the first person tested with music measurement and, like his
mother, always supports me with love, hope, and persistence.
My students, Zhi-Hao Zheng, Min Zhang, Hong-Zhen He, Yi-Bin Pan, Hai-
Ou Wang, Bo-Lin Xu, Yuan-Dong Zhou, Li-Jun Meng, and many others in
China, who did so much important work along with my former assistant Da-Lin
Li, who helped to edit and publish Current Development of Biophysics at
Hangzhou University Press in China in 1996.
Jonathan Heaney, who spent countless hours improving and rewriting the
entire English manuscript sentence by sentence and word by word. Jonathan
would like to thank his wife, Mei Ling Chang, for her constant support,
encouragement, and feedback as well as Cindy Colson and Jillian Heaney for
their advice and feedback.
Actually, this list is endless; it is impossible to acknowledge all of those who
helped me in any book with limited pages.
CONTENTS
Foreword
Preface
Introduction
PART 1: THE WORLD OF THE BLIND
1. Revisiting “Blind Men Study an Elephant”
2. Spiritualized Physics and Materialized Psychology and Biology
3. Inaudible Music and the Invisible Rainbow around Us
PART 2: TWO PARADIGM SHIFTS—ONE IN MEDICINE, ANOTHER
IN SCIENCE
4. Major Changes in the Medical Market
5. Queen Victoria Studies TV
6. Blind Scientists Discover the Rainbow
PART 3: DEVELOPING THE CONCEPT OF STRUCTURE
7. A New Continent in Science: The Dissipative Structure
8. Standing Waves and Wave Superposition
9. Wireless Communication inside a Body
PART 4: FIELD AND WAVE ASPECTS OF BIOLOGY
10. Powerful Resonance: A Secret Means of Transferring Energy and
Information
11. The Mysterious Aura: From Religious to Practical