Most thinking is analogical. One uses patterns from the past in order restructure and recreate new social patterns. What happens when social change is so disparate that the old patterns are disparate with the new ones. Such is the nature of traditional medical practices in the West and how they differ from new medical practices. How can one incorporate the tradition of acupuncture into western medicine? This is the focus of this investigation.
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What happens when one borrows a form or a concept from another cultural system? Traditionally, reference is given to the original form and its manifestation in the new borrowing cultures. This model of lexical borrowing is inadequate. Once a word is borrowed it becomes the property of the new culture and it is used by the new culture to fit its own social needs. Structures are borrowed and quickly grammaticalized. Words are borrowed and quickly restructured. Such is the nature of cultural borrowing.
By living in a new culture, one gradually encounters new pattersn of socialization. One encounters great changes in thinking, feeling, and these are incorporated into a new way of living. The old cultural habitus overlaps with the new. This transition between cultures is invisible because the forms that are encountered are part of a tacit knowledge system. In order to return to one's home culture, it is necessary to recognizes these invisible doors. This is done through metacognition. One needs to think about one's home culture and how it differs from the host culture. For example, the picture on the left has a theme based on the indigenous cultures of North America, however, it is organized in terms of European art where the center forms the basis for the visual morphology of the painting. If this were done in the visual syntax of these indigenous cultures, it would be represented in the form of the quarternity.