• Journal of Physiology & Pathology in Korean Medicine
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.125-131
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• 2021

The scientific understanding of Korean medicine theory remains largely unknown, since there is a lack of proper methods to investigate its complex and unique characteristics. Here, we introduce a drug-centered approach, a novel method to investigate Korean medicine theory by analyzing the mechanisms of herbal medicines. This method can be effectively conducted by employing network pharmacology that can analyze the systems-level mechanisms of herbal medicines on a large scale. Firstly, we introduce the method of network pharmacology that are applied to analyze the mechanisms of herbal medicines in a step-by-step manner. Then, we show how the drug-centered approach employing network pharmacology can be applied to investigate Korean medicine theory by describing studies that identify the biological correlates of the cold-hot nature of herbs, spleen qi deficiency syndrome, or Sasang constitution. Finally, we discuss the limitations and future directions of the proposed approach in two aspects: The methods of network pharmacology for a drug-centered approach and the process of inferring Korean medicine theory through it. We believe that a drug-centered approach employing network pharmacology will provide an advanced scientific understanding of Korean medicine theory and contribute to its development by generating biologically plausible hypothesis.

• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• v.145
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• pp.167-194
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• 2018

According to the result of 2017 youth statistics, the first rank of the death cause of Korean youth is suicide for nine years. The recent study on factors affecting juvenile suicide presents: family factors; character and psychological factors; mental disease factors; suicide-triggering factors; school factors; and protection factors; and so on. What is required to the youth who are vulnerable to the confusion of identity and the adjustment of emotion or impulse is not only drug treatment or mental therapy but also the support of family or society where adolescents are encouraged to be introspective and form their identity in a healthy approach in the diverse humanistic philosophical dimension. This study is going to pay attention to the aesthetic existence of Kierkegaard who provided the foundation of human existential identity centered on three stages of existence. For this purpose, we attempt to search for the philosophical basis for the understanding of juvenile identity centered on the analysis of Kierkegaard's Either / Or Volume I (Entweder - Oder Teil I). Especially, we are going to attempt the understanding of aesthetics of youth through the analysis of three stages of desire (Begierde) suggested in Chapter 2 of this book. Herewith he suggests aesthetic existence through 'desire', and aesthetic existence as the desire again through three stages of 'dreaming ($tr{\ddot{a}}umend$)' desire, 'searching (suchend)' desire, and 'desiring (begehrend)' desire. Based on this analysis of three stages, we plan to graft the roots of sociological factors presented as the cause of youth's suicide onto the analysis of existential philosophy. Through this, we attempt to grope for the diagnostic and healing discourse which Kierkegaard's existential analysis can present in the formation and recognition of youth identity and disclose a factor of the emotion or the disorder of impulse adjustment as well as depression suggested as the main contributing factor of youth's suicide and search for philosophical discourse for the prevention of juvenile suicide.