Page 12 - Foundations of Naturopathic Medicine

Foreward
BY DAVID J. SCHLEICH, PHD
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george bernard shaw famously warned us, as only he could frame such a sentiment, that “we learn from history that we learn nothing from history”.
At the same time, George Santayana, the philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist, equally adept with rhetoric, had something perhaps a bit more optimistic to share, that “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” So, there is, after all, a way forward through the vagaries and vicissitudes of events, individuals and groups over time. The remarkable TIMELINE of the Foundations of Naturopathic Medicine project is a powerful instrument for the naturopathic profession to help us move in such positive directions, to make sense of the continuum of relations and the knot of political, social and epistemological roots which manifest in today’s educational, clinical and research challenges.
Having studied progressive iterations of this effort by many people in the naturopathic profession and related groups, I can attest to the substantial and enduring value of the TIMELINE’s detail, to
its scholarship, and to its very language; that is, and I am drawing on Immanuel Kant’s exceptional wisdom here for my point, the density and inter-relatedness of content here across decades and decades allow us to discern not only momentum, but also what
he calls “a regular movement” in that continuum, which though it be complex, chaotic and seemingly repetitive and exasperating, exhibits through its breadth and depth a steady progress in the end.
During worried moments when I witness the unrelenting
bruising efforts of our detractors, I am reminded of Machiavelli’s dictum, that “human events ever resemble those of preceding times”. Close reading of all the events, people, institutions and organizations in the naturopathic story will point out the greatest aspect of this TIMELINE’s contribution to all our collective work, that this history may seem more moral than scientific at times, and that both are strong in the product, in the outcomes. By knowing more about who we were once, and how we got to the present, we are less strangers in the strange land of integrative medicine dominated by orthodox systems. We become architects having learned from what we endure, enabled by understanding such detail as the TIMELINE presents the best ways to create and sustain forward-looking structures which are increasingly resilient to the tsunami of economic priority and guild behavior.
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