bubble_chart Content

In 1981, the mainland scholar Zhang Ying-qing published the "Biological Holographic Law" in the renowned journal Nature, which caused a significant response both domestically and internationally, marking a milestone in holographic biology and providing an excellent annotation to many observations of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).

The so-called "Biological Holographic Law" refers to the idea that a part of an organism can reflect the information of the entire organism. As a biological entity, humans also satisfy the holographic law. In fact, holographic units are distributed throughout the human body. For example, the second metacarpal bone discovered by Zhang Ying-qing (Figure 1), the auricular points discovered by the French ⁽¹⁾ (Figure 2), pulse diagnosis in TCM (Figure 3), facial diagnosis (Figure 4), tongue diagnosis (Figure 5), hand and foot acupuncture points (Figure 6), hand and foot reflex zones (Figure 7), and so on, all reflect the information of the whole body from a local part, serving as a microcosm of the entire human body. Zhang Ying-qing specifically referred to these miniature subunits as "holographic units," and within these "holographic units," even smaller "holographic units" can exist. A single cell also contains the information of the entire body and can be considered the smallest unit of the human holographic unit.

In addition to serving as diagnostic units by reflecting the information of the entire body, holographic units can often also be therapeutic units. For example, the second metacarpal bone discovered by Zhang Ying-qing corresponds to the entire human body. By pressing various points on the second metacarpal bone with fingertips, when a particularly sore point is found, it indicates a disorder in the corresponding organ. Acupuncture at that point can then treat and regulate the corresponding organ. Similarly, the auricle also corresponds to the entire human body. Local darkening, scaling, or varicose veins on the auricle reflect discomfort in the corresponding organ. Treatment can involve massage on that local area, auricular acupuncture, or applying Cowherb Seed and periodically stimulating them through massage, thereby alleviating discomfort in the affected area.

Foot massage also produces distant regulatory and soothing effects by stimulating the local holographic units on the feet that correspond to human organs or tissues.

The pulse diagnosis in TCM (Figure 3) involves the physician using their fingers to sense the systemic functional information revealed by the pulsation of the patient's radial artery holographic unit (see the section "What is Pulse Diagnosis Checking For?"). The observation of the face (Figure 4) and the tongue (Figure 5) in diagnosis also involves observing the systemic information revealed by the entire face and tongue holographic units, respectively.

Additionally, acupuncture in TCM does not specifically target the affected area. Many of its miraculous distant acupuncture effects are often achieved by stimulating a point on the holographic unit that corresponds to the affected organ or tissue. For example, needling the Taichong point on the dorsum of the foot can treat head and eye disorders, as this acupoint corresponds to the head and eye areas of the foot's holographic unit.

TCM believes in the "correspondence between nature and human," meaning that phenomena existing in the universe also have corresponding phenomena within the human body. The author believes that the "human body" is also a holographic element of the entire surface ecosystem of the Earth (Figure 8). Starting from an unfertilized egg, the egg is like the Earth (mother), and the sperm is like the light, heat, and information from the great yang (father). When the sperm enters the egg, the creation of another small universe begins. Thus, "the Tai Chi divides into two Forms, the two Forms divide into four Symbols, the four Symbols generate eight Trigrams, and the eight Trigrams determines the universe," completing another life form, a small universe. Afterward, the area above the diaphragm resembles the sky, with the two lungs filled with air flow, the heart like the great yang hanging in the sky, continuously pulsating to emit light and heat (i.e., blood flow in the vessels) to the entire body, and body fluids like lakes and seas, nourishing and maintaining warmth. In fact, the proportion and composition of water in the human body are quite similar to those of the oceans on the Earth's surface, which also explains why the heart evolved to beat intermittently rather than continuously, due to the daily cycle, as the Earth's surface also receives the light and heat of the great yang intermittently, not continuously. The organs below the diaphragm, such as the stomach and intestines, resemble the earth, where any food and drink are transformed into nutrients to nourish every living being (cell) in this small universe. The liver is like a great tree, rooted in the vast land of the stomach and intestines, carrying out various forms of regulation. Therefore, the author believes that the fertilized egg not only replays the evolutionary history of life on Earth but is also a microcosm of the currently living Earth.

Figure 8, "Human Body Holographic Element"──Humans are a microcosm of the universe.

In nonlinear physics, there is a structure called the "dissipative system" ⁽²⁾, which encompasses chaos, fractals, holography, nonlinear mathematics, etc. The author believes that this theory best explains the holographic phenomena of life. The holographic element of life is not an exception but a common phenomenon shared by all "nonlinear dynamic systems." The various activities on the Earth's surface are like a pot of "nonlinear dynamic system" soup, with the great yang and geothermal heat as the main power sources. They act on the Earth's surface, cooking up a "chaos soup," hence the various forms within it have the characteristics of fractal patterns──patterns that repeat themselves from the whole to the minutest detail (Figure 9). Humans, nurtured within this, naturally bear the imprint of this "chaos soup"──within humans, there are even smaller human patterns. An ancient Chinese proverb says, "Heaven is the father, Earth is the mother." The Bible says, "God created man in His own image." Isn't this profoundly meaningful?

Figure 9: The famous fractal example "Mandelbrot set"
Image source: Wikipedia

bubble_chart Footnote

1. In 1957, the French doctor Paul Nogier published "Treatise of Auriculotherapy," claiming to have discovered a smaller acupuncture system on each ear, known as the "micro-acupuncture system," and pointed out that the connections of these acupuncture points closely resemble the anatomical diagram of a fetus in a head-down position.
2. The dissipating system, also known as the dissipating structure, was proposed by the Belgian chemist and physicist Ilya Prigogine, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977.