Ayurved strongly holds our collective consciousness, but we don’t understand it well enough–not even those who claim the superiority of Ayurved over other therapeutic systems. The knowledge required to make such claims simply does not exist.

Ayurved is a pharmacopoeia and a system of therapeutics that closely developed alongside our civilisation, going back millennia. This body of knowledge must be considered quite advanced for those times. Today, arguments both for and against Ayurved often descend to tribalistic shrilling full of vapid ad hominem—mainly because the history of Ayurved is often intertwined with our own cultural history. The debate is certainly not informed enough to make claims about whether it is any better than other systems of therapeutics, like allopathy. We deserve better. So does Ayurved.

With enough effort, Ayurved could be co-opted and developed into a modern system of therapeutics. But before that, we have to start with the assiduous task of brushing up, building and understanding the knowledge base of Ayurved. It needs to pass the muster of the currently accepted standards of knowledge creation and the determination of objective truths.

Empirical observation

Scientific investigation and scientific methods are the tools currently used to determine what are known as verifiable objective truths that explain physical phenomena such as biological processes. By the standards of modern science, Ayurved often comes up short in this aspect: We haven’t yet validated what most Ayurvedic therapies do to the body and how they do it. For a system of therapeutics that some claim is better than what we currently practise, this level of scientific precision and objective fidelity is just not acceptable.

Ayurvedic knowledge developed over time as a series of careful observations of the efficacy of a certain natural substance or concoctions on a particular kind of sickness. In that sense, Ayurved starts where modern accepted scientific investigation methods start, with a few careful observations. From there, Ayurved uses inductive reasoning to extend that knowledge from the few to the general—without an adequate understanding of what drives the process. That, by the standards of the modern scientific method, is a problem.

Let’s take the example of Aswagandha, a plant used to treat diseases of the mind and body and as a nervine tonic. The plant is also used in ailments such as gastric ulcers, joint pains, mental illnesses, Parkinson’s disease and even cancers. Ayurvedic practitioners gathered knowledge on the usefulness of Ashwagandha over time by careful observation of the effect of this plant’s extract on these conditions. However, they neither knew the biochemical basis of the diseases they were treating nor what chemical entity in this plant was acting upon the human body or how it was doing so.

Because there was minimal, if any, understanding of the anatomical details of the human body, from the cell upwards, there was no way Ayurved could explain how these agents were working on the human body. As a result, there was no way to know how these benefits were accruing or if there was any harm from these agents. Therefore, most of the Ayurvedic knowledge was an observation of the net effect of these agents on the human body as opposed to a real and detailed understanding of what went under the hood.

With a modern understanding of biochemistry, cell biology and the biochemical processes that drive it, it is now possible to study many Ayurvedic therapies using the scientific method of replicable experiments. For example, the root of Ashwagandha has been found to have bioactive chemical compounds called “glycowithanolides” that appear to reduce anxiety in mice. These experiments now need to be extended to human beings. When these experiments on the effect of “glycowithanolides” are repeatedly verified by several experiments, they become part of our accepted scientific knowledge base. This is the basis of modern experimental science—broadly covered under the philosophical ideas of empiricism—the idea that all knowledge (or concepts) is built by experience.

The broad idea of empiricism is that ideas, concepts and knowledge are generated by our senses in order to make observations of the physical world. Or that a belief becomes rational only through repeated experiences and observations. This is a modern basis of scientific observation that aims to deduce rational truths about the physical world around us.

In this regard, Ayurved and modern biomedicine begin roughly at the same place. But they diverge when modern biomedicine takes empiricism beyond what our sense organs can perceive to the microscopic. Modern scientific methods allow us to see, measure and experience the microscopic cellular structures and the biochemical processes that drive cells and tissues. Therefore, what is observable becomes much broader (enhanced empiricism), making it possible to experimentally verify what a chemical or a biological substance does to the human body. This results in an understanding of a therapeutic much richer than previously possible, which Ayurved never achieved.

Theory of falsification

Another idea in the modern philosophy of science that has helped biomedicine get an advantage over ancient systems of therapies like Ayurved is the theory of falsification. The idea of falsification is that a scientific theory that attempts to explain a physical phenomenon needs to set the experimental premise under which it can be proven false before it can be considered scientific. Any plausible scientific theory subjected to experiments is considered true until repeated, carefully done experiments fail to falsify the theory's premise. This is the starting point for modern scientific hypothesis testing.

Modern philosophy of science has offered inordinate clarity in the development of modern scientific methods, which has turbocharged the development of biomedicine. Ayurved has lost ground here; fortunately, not everything is lost. Ayurved is a hotbed of empirically testable theories that can benefit from the methodologies of modern science. Enhanced empiricism and ideas of falsifiability can be helpful for the objective and dispassionate examination of Ayurved as a potential system for modern therapeutics. This is how Ayurved can be made relevant in the modern day, and not through indiscriminate brow-beating of anyone who might demand more intellectual rigour from it.