Dear John
By "mixture of potencies" I am assuming that you mean a mixture of potentised substances, like Aloe and Bell that was mentioned yesterday in one of the posts.
Are you now saying that Hn did not reject these?
Best wishes
Soroush
________________________________
From:
minutus@yahoogroups.com [mailto:
minutus@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of John Harvey
Sent: 31 July 2009 06:06
To:
minutus@yahoogroups.com
Cc: warriorhomeopath
Subject: Re: [Minutus] Re: Swine flu
Hi, Soroush --
I'm going to agree with Liz and "warriorhomeopath" over a couple of things here.
First, the acceptance or rejection of mixtures of potencies in particular (as opposed to potencies of mixtures of unpotentised substances) is not something that Hahnemann could have tested and rejected if it had not been invented at that stage. And I've seen no evidence to suggest that it had.
That said, though, a mixture of potencies carries all the problematic uncertainties of any other mixture, and as well raises a host of new synergistic relationships in vitro and in vivo. That being the case, there is no way in the world that Hahnemann would have imagined a mixture of potencies as not constituting polypharmacy, because he wasn't stupid. Rochelle's illustration of a "combination" made up by mixing three 4c potencies together and potentising that mixture up illustrates perfectly that, try as one might to imagine that these remedies are separate entities that self-select and don't interfere with each other, they are in any case frequently mixed in substantial quantities (and 4c is quite substantial enough) before being potentised.
But what matters (to homoeopathic practice) is hardly whether Hahnemann would have accepted or rejected combinations of potencies, whether he would have pronounced them good or ill.
And this brings me to a second point of agreement with Liz: that how Hahnemann said to practise homoeopathy is not at all the same thing as understanding whether any variation on practice is worthwhile or even remains homoeopathic.
It is tempting to use statements by Hahnemann, and even perhaps by lesser authorities, as evidence of a (potentially) testable fact beyond the simple one that they made the statement -- and the suggestion that they had proper reason for doing so.
In the case of Hahnemann, it is usually taken for granted (and with good reason) that if he states, for instance, that he experimented upon healthy volunteers and observed particular effects, then he actually did so. Still, the matter, being a statement of fact, is open to questioning.
Still more open to questioning is any declaration of fact by Hahnemann (and by anybody else!) that appears not to be grounded in evidence.
An action is a different matter.
Statements such as "the Master quite categorically rejects Combos" or "Now Hn would not have rejected it, if it had had any merit", even if they happen to be provably true -- and I know of no evidence for them, as it happens -- are validly open to criticism as reflecting merely one man's action (rejection) rather than tending to show any underlying fact. The underlying fact here is merely a presumed one, presumed by the status of the actor described; in this case, "the Master". It must remain open to questioning.
Just as open to questioning must be the beliefs of any practitioner, regardless of the reputation of the college that instilled those beliefs. Though I'm sure that you did not intend it to communicate the contempt that "warriorhomeopath" took as your intent, Soroush, what something like this
"- What college was that then?
"- Didn't know about Sheilagh Creasy? Well poor you? You missed out a big lot!"
unfortunately communicates with clarity is that you value any proper investigation of any claim of fact in order to determine the truth less than you value the status of the person making the claim.
This same priority of status over truth unfortunately communicates itself in many of your references to Hahnemann and now to Sheilagh and even to yourself: that claims should remain unquestioned simply because of the status of he who makes them. (Read aloud, for instance, some of the quotes from you that I listed under "What dispute over terminology?" a couple of days ago. Their apparent pomposity derives not from any real sense of self-importance but only from your use of yourself -- and others -- as identities having the status to override that most sacrosanct of scientific endeavours: questioning.) And anybody who values the pursuit of truth finds the elevation of personal status over factual certainty not just unacceptable but frankly bizarre.
As a method of reasoning, ad hominem, as it's formally known, has been universally rejected by all thinkers for a long time now as a fallacy: a process of reasoning that can lead from true premises to false conclusions.
But, that said, some things are not subject to investigation, falsifiability, proof, or disproof.
Amongst these, I've given already examples of speech acts: promises, apologies, orders, and so on. Speech acts are not subject to being shown to be false: they are not falsifiable. No more is definition, another speech act, falsifiable.
I may define a Godness as being the power to break all laws of physics, or a Conundrite as an alloy of impossibilities. It wouldn't matter if -- as you could, if you wished to -- you were to prove that it is not possible to break all laws of physics, or to prove that impossibilities are... well... impossible. My definitions would remain unaffected.
This is because they do not depend upon the use, value, existence, or truth of what they entail. Just so do definitions of gods and fairies remain independent of evidence as to such beings' existence or nonexistence.
When "warriorhomeopath" refers at the end of his latest message in this thread to Hahnemann's repeated rewriting of the Organon, I trust that he is referring to Hahnemann's fresh findings of fact (which doubtless would have continued had he lived forever), rather than to something that Hahnemann himself could not have brought about: alterations in the definition of homoeopathy itself.
Once Hahnemann had created that definition and set it free, not even a Godness could have brought it back. If Hahnemann had wanted to create a replacement "homoeopathy", one including something inherently falling outside the original "homoeopathy" (including, for instance, prescription without knowledge of the patient's symptoms, or the prescription of medicinal mixtures, or prescription of other medicines without a pathogenesis, or prescription of a medicine without comparison of its pathogenesis with the patient's symptoms), then he would have had to create a new term for it, something to distinguish it from the old -- or else the term homoeopathy would have suffered a conflict in definition.
What he could not have done is to replace the older term with something like "first-edition homoeopathy" or "Hahnemannian homoeopathy" and redefine "homoeopathy" more broadly. Attempting to do so would have created a conflict, as the definition the word began with cannot easily be wiped from history, memory, or use.
Beyond this list itself and in particular those few on it who to this day persist in misunderstanding either the definition of a plain word or the function of a definition, I've never seen any suggestion that the term homoeopathy does suffer from such a conflict in definition. No dictionary; no ordinary person; in fact nobody without an apparent conflict of interest deriving from her own actions (and this, I'm aware, includes certain pseudo-skeptics and certain practitioners of arts that they wish to be known as homoeopathy) appears to have any problem in accepting that a definition defines something, and, in particular, that homoeopathy's definition defines homoeopathy.
Despite Irene's liberties with it (and despite your own, Soroush, with the meaning of ordinary words such as "substance"), that definition is not subject to the rigours of science, truth, or common sense, but remains to tell us what this thing homoeopathy is, and what it is not, for all time. It is subject neither to falsification nor to the status of any proponent for a new "homoeopathy", be he a "highly respected" Peter Chappell or a worshipped Sheilagh Creasy.
Of course, the beauty of Hahnemann's definition is that he made it minimal. It does not entail fourth-edition prescribing methods any more than it does first-edition ones, and, probably more by luck than by design, it does not even preclude use of potencies. It does, however, preclude whatever advances may yet be made in the fields of combinatorics and combinatorial pathogenetics, and their parahomoeopathic use.
That is not to say that one day such fields may not become fully fledged medical methods in their own right and even surpass (dubious though I remain!) the exactness of knowledge that pathogenetic testing and homoeopathic prescription of single, simple medicines offers.
But these new fields can never fall within the field of action -- defined by use of one and only one single, simple medicinal substance at one time upon the basis of that substance's superior similarity to the patient's illness over all other known substances -- that is homoeopathy.
Kind regards,
John
2009/7/30 >
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"Nothing is so fatal to the progress of the human mind as to suppose that our views of science are ultimate; that there are no mysteries in nature; that our triumphs are complete; and that there are no new worlds to conquer."
— Sir Humphry Davy, in "An Account of some Galvanic Combinations", Philosophical Transactions 91 (1801), pp. 397–402 (as quoted by David Knight, Humphry Davy: Science and Power, Cambridge, 1998, p. 87)
