Logic Programming and Non-Monotonic Reasoning

At the heart of medical history is a deep enigma.The true structure and workings ofthe human body are, we casually assume, everywhere the same, a universal reality. But then we lookinto the past, and our sense of reality wavers: accounts of the body in diverse medical traditionsoften seem to describe mutually alien, almost unrelated worlds.The Expressiveness of the Bodymeditates on the contrasts between the human body described in classical Greek medicine and the bodyas envisaged by physicians in ancient China. It asks how this most basic of human realities came tobe conceived by two sophisticated civilizations in radically diverging ways. And it seeks answers infresh and unexpected topics, such as the history of tactile knowledge, the relationship between waysof seeing and ways of listening, and the evolution of bloodletting.

Shigehisa Kuriyama is Associate Professor and Staff Researcher at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies.