Minutus

Hi again, Shannon --
If the remedy has been prescribed on some basis other than symptom similarity, then of course it is not homoeopathy, as you say; but an analogy more apt than the refusal to call nuclear physics "physics" would be to refuse to call physics "chemistry" though both belong in the physical sciences. Just as physics did not grow out of chemistry and is not an application of chemistry, any method that does not apply the law of similars is not an application of homoeopathy.
Simple, really, isn't it.
As for Luise's question, I'm agnostic; I have no knowledge of the situation it refers to.
Cheers!
John
2009/7/6 Shannon & Bob Nelson >
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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)

Hi, Luise --

Yes, I was aware of all this; I hoped to use an imperfect but better analogy to make my point. Thanks for screwing it up!

Seriously, though they overlap in subject matter, and though they're fields of study rather than methodologies, the analogy may be strong enough to illustrate the point. If not, there are plenty more analogies where that came from. For instance, we may arrive at a certain strength of solution either by adding or by evaporating water. Although the result we're aiming for may be the same in each case, the methods used to arrive at it have nothing in common, and certainly evaporation cannot, on the basis of the aim, be classified as a type of dilution or an offshoot of it, or vice versa. To take another instance: an allopathic vet gives lame horses that owners wish to have killed a large injection of strychinine. Once in a blue moon, the lame horse is one that has tetanus and is cured by the injection rather than killed by it. We do not thereby classify the attempt to kill horses by strychnine injection as a "type" of homoeopathy or an offshoot of it.

Cheers!

John
2009/7/7 Luise Kunkle >