And as people live that way, the system, in turn, is consolidated. Insofar as the system of assimilation is working, explanations in terms of YYFP are counted good or at least relevant and acceptable. At this point, a question of circularity concerning the relevance of explanation or the criteria of good explanation, as well as a question about the actual use of causal concepts in Eastern civilization, may arise. These questions are worth considering. It is because YYFP has prevailed in some cultures for 2,000 years, providing a rational ground for various human and natural phenomena, even if explanations given under the YYFP cannot be counted as scientific from the modern Western point of view.
Chinese medicine is still very widely practiced in the East.
This tells us that what determines for a society or culture the relevance of a given explanation is a knowledge framework a culture or a society has. It determines not only what to count as a good explanation, but also what calls for an explanation. In Chinese medicine, diseases are said to be the imbalance between the two ch'is, yin and yang, in the body. Explanations appealing to the movements of yin and yang are relevant and would serve people's need in that context. The questions for which the explanations are provided might not even appear in the context of Western medicine.