• 동의생리병리학회지
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• 제26권6호
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• pp.855-863
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• 2012

The organic and holistic recognition method about nature in east asian philosophy is also applied to the study of the human body in Korean medicine. In Korean medicine, the human body is being understood from a holistic point of view rather than a mechanical or reductive one. The main east asian philosophies are the heavens thought and the Yin-yang/Five Phase Theory. This study will explore the influence the general flow of heavens thought has on explaining the human body in Korean medicine and the formation of how the human body is perceived in "Huangdineijing"(黃帝內經). First, the primitive meaning of heaven was developed to include the natural heaven of Xia (夏), the lord heaven of Shang(商) and the moral heaven of Zhou(周) dynasties. Among these, the natural heaven notion of the Xia(夏) dynasty which recognized heaven as the one with the power to create everything. This was followed by Taoism which established the contrasting system of heaven and earth. Based on this, "Huangdineijing"(黃帝 內經) developed the perception of the human body, taking into account, heaven as the original substance to generate the human body through the mutual sympathy between heavenly energy and earthly form. The perspective of the correspondence between nature and human in "Huainantzu"(淮南子) and "L$\breve{u}$shichunqiu"(呂氏春秋) was succeeded by Tung Chung-Shu(董仲舒). Based on this development, the perception of the human body in "Huangdineijing"(黃帝內經) is related to the seasonal cycle and the notion of night and day to balance the physiology of the human body. It recognizes that its structure, shape, emotional state and physiological actions are correlated with heaven.