We hear critics of homeopathy often declaring that homeopathy “cannot work” as its theories are unscientific. Those friends should understand, such an approach is totally against the spirit of “scienetific method” you always boast about.
In any objective natural phenomenon, it is not the theories that actually work. Theories are subjective human explainations of the phenomena formulated on the basis of our existing knowledge. Natural phenomena are objective, and they work independant of our understanding about it. For example,gravitation was existing here since the origin of universe, and what Newton did was only to explain it in the form of a set of laws, based on the scientific knowledge available to him. It is wrong to think that its is newtons laws that work in gravitation. Gravitation would have worked even if newton did not study about it. Gravitation will continue to work even if newtons laws ever happen to be proved wrong. This truth is applicable to all natural phenomena as well as scientific theories and laws we formulate about them.
If currently existing theories of homeopathy are any way unscientific, or incompatible with modern scientific knowledge system, if you follow the principles of scientific method, what you have to do is to try to explain the objective phenomena involved in homeopathy using modern scientific knowledge, and propose a modified or new theory accordingly. It is against scientific method to declare outrightly that “homeopathy cannot work as its theories are unscientific”!
It was about 230 years ago that a german physician called samuel hahnemann observed a peculiar natural phenomenon regarding relationship between drug substances and cure of diseases. He found that if symptoms expressed by a person in certain disease conditions are found to be similar to the symptoms that could be produced by a drug substance in healthy individuals, that particular drug substance could work as a curative agent in that particular disease condition. After a lot of experiments with different drug substances and different diseases, he formulated a theory known as “similia similibus curentur”. Obviously, “similia similibus curentur” is a therapeutic law derived from hahnemann’s observations of objective phenomenon involved in disease and cure.
Hahnemann tried to explain “similia similibus curentur” further, and develop it into a theoretical system, utilizing the philosophical concepts of “dynamic energy and vital force”. Beyond any doubt, this theoretical system is bound to be unscientific as it is based on the primitive state of scientific knowledge that was availble at that time. But it is wrong to think that the objective natural phenomenon involved in “similia similibus curentur” will not work or exist, only because the theoretical explanation hahnemann provided for it is wrong or inaccurate. What scientific people have to do is to study the phenomenon once again and to propose a new theoretical explanation that is more scientific and accurate.
Actually what hahnemann observed was that if symptoms expressed in a person in certain disease conditions are found to be similar to the symptoms that could be produced by a drug substance in healthy individuals, that particular drug substance could work as a curative agent in that disease condition. It is an objective onservation of a phenomenon that exist in nature. Whether we interpret or explain it rightly or wrongly, it will continue to work independant of our subjective understanding or theories formulated there from.
In the present knowledge environment, what does it mean if symptoms expressed in a disease as well as symptoms produced by drug substance in a healthy individual appear similar? It simply means, the disease- producing substance as well as the particular drug substance contain some chemical molecules that are similar, so that they could bind to same biological targets, and produce similar inhibitions and molecular errors, that are expressed through similar subjective and objective symptoms. Our knowledge of modern biochemistry will help us understand the phenomenon known as molecular mimicry, and how similar chemical molecules can compete each other in binding to similar biological targets, and how this comptetitive relationship could be utilized for the removal of certain pathological molecular inhibitions.
If you could understand the above discussion correctly, and if you have no special bias against homeopathy, now you will have to agree that “similia similibus curentur” is not that much unscientific or irrational as those skeptics try to make it out!
REDEFINING HOMEOPATHY 