Free Whole by T. Colin Campbell Page A

scientific and medical paradigm.
    From those initial outliers came heretical questions. From the questions flowed heretical answers, which led to a heretical set of principles. But for a long time I was trying to apply these principles inside a paradigm so big that even I couldn’t see it. It was only when I started questioning the mechanisms of the scientific method itself that I stepped outside the biggest, most restrictive, and most insidious paradigm of all: reductionism.

PART II

Paradigm as Prison

I n Part I, I introduced the idea that important information about our health is being withheld from us, and that the lack of this information has contributed to our expensive and tragically ineffective health-care system. In Part II, we’ll take on the first of two things responsible for that withholding: the current reductionist paradigm.
    We’ll begin in chapter four by introducing reductionism and its opposing worldview, wholism, in a philosophical and historical context. In some ways these two lenses represent a more fundamental division in consciousness than any other in modern society, including political and social views and religious affinities.
    In chapters five through twelve, we’ll examine exactly how reductionism has affected the way we think about nutrition and health. We’ll consider how it influences not just how we interpret research results, but also what kind of research is done in the first place. We’ll look at its role in the ascendency of genetics in the scientific community—and the limitations of genetics for addressing disease—and at how reductionism influences the way we think about the connection between environmental toxins and cancer. We’ll see how reductionism has infected the most fundamental tenets of research, as well as the development of health products and services, turning powerful institutions into veritable zombies: seemingly animate, yet devoid of any compassion or desire to make us well. Last, we’ll broaden our view to the repercussions of reductionism in our eating habits far beyond our individual and collective health, in areas as diverse as human poverty, animal cruelty, and environmental degradation.
    By the time we’re done, you’ll discover that “conclusive proof” can look very different depending on which paradigm you embrace. You’lldiscover why most research into diet and health is contradictory and confusing. And you’ll see why it’s so important for us to rescue nutrition from the rustic backwaters of science and social policy to which it has been relegated.

4

The Triumph of Reductionism
We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are.
    — TALMUD
    A n old story: Six blind men are asked to describe an elephant. Each feels a different body part: leg, tusk, trunk, tail, ear, and belly. Predictably, each offers a vastly different assessment: pillar, pipe, tree branch, rope, fan, and wall. They argue vigorously, each sure that their experience alone is the correct one.
    I can’t think of a better metaphor to highlight the big problem with scientific research today. Except that instead of six blind men, modern science tasks 60,000 researchers to examine the elephant, each through a different lens.
    Now, there’s nothing wrong with that, in and of itself. You could argue that the six men, each focused on an individual part, together produce a richer and more detailed description of an elephant than could be generated by one person just walking around looking at the creaturein its entirety. Similarly, think of the level of detailed understanding that 60,000 scientists can glean when they are empowered to focus on such granular component parts.
    The problem arises only when, as in the parable, the individual points of view are mistakenly seen as describing the whole truth. When a laser-like focus is misunderstood as a global overview. When the six men or 60,000 researchers don’t talk to one another or acknowledge that the overall goal of the