We cannot make homeopathy established as a scientific medicine without discarding the concept of vital force from its theoretical system.
Vitalism is an unscientific philosophical stream that is based on the belief that “living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things”.
Where vitalism explicitly invokes a vital principle, that element is often referred to as the “vital spark”, vital force, “energy” or “élan vital”, which some equate with the soul.
In the 18th and 19th centuries vitalism was discussed among biologists, between those who felt that the known mechanics of physics would eventually explain the difference between life and non-life and vitalists who argued that the processes of life could not be reduced to a mechanistic process.
Some vitalist biologists proposed testable hypotheses meant to show inadequacies with mechanistic explanations, but these experiments failed to provide support for vitalism.
Biologists now consider vitalism in this sense to have been refuted by empirical evidence, and hence regard it either as a superseded scientific theory, or, since the mid-20th century, as a pseudoscience.
Vitalism has a long history in medical philosophies: many traditional healing practices posited that disease results from some imbalance in vital forces.
The notion that bodily functions are due to a vitalistic principle existing in all living creatures has roots going back at least to ancient Egypt. In Greek philosophy, the Milesian school proposed natural explanations deduced from materialism and mechanism.
However, by the time of Lucretius, this account was supplemented, and in Stoic physics, the pneuma assumed the role of logos. Galen believed the lungs draw pneuma from the air, which the blood communicates throughout the body
Vitalism has a long history in medical philosophies: many traditional healing practices posited that disease results from some imbalance in vital forces.
In the Western tradition founded by Hippocrates, these vital forces were associated with the four temperaments and humours; Eastern traditions posited an imbalance or blocking of qi or prana. One example of a similar notion in Africa is the Yoruba concept of ase. Today forms of vitalism continue to exist as philosophical positions or as tenets in some religious traditions.
Complementary and alternative medicine therapies include energy therapies, associated with vitalism, especially biofield therapies such as therapeutic touch, Reiki, external qi, chakra healing and SHEN therapy. In these therapies, the “subtle energy” field of a patient is manipulated by a practitioner. The subtle energy is held to exist beyond the electromagnetic energy produced by the heart and brain. Beverly Rubik describes the biofield as a “complex, dynamic, extremely weak EM field within and around the human body….”
The founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann, promoted an immaterial, vitalistic view of disease: “…they are solely spirit-like (dynamic) derangements of the spirit-like power (the vital principle) that animates the human body.” The view of disease as a dynamic disturbance of the immaterial and dynamic vital force is taught in many homeopathic colleges and constitutes a fundamental principle for many contemporary practising homeopaths.
Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, stated “And so to those of you who may be vitalists I would make this prophecy: what everyone believed yesterday, and you believe today, only cranks will believe tomorrow.”
While many vitalistic theories have in fact been falsified, notably Mesmerism, the pseudoscientific retention of untested and untestable theories continues to this day. Nearly all the pseudoscientific systems are based philosophically on vitalism, and mainstream science has rejected vitalism since at least the 1930s, for a plethora of good reasons that have only become stronger with time.
REDEFINING HOMEOPATHY 