For many years when I first started studying homeopathy, terms like “energy medicine” and references to quantum mechanics used to drive me crazy. I once knew a physics grad student who complained that new age people were like crows: flying over the fields of science, picking up shiny bits and taking them back to impress the other crows, but not understanding what they were really used for. There is a lot of truth to that, for better or worse, and this is one reason why alternative things like homeopathy seem so woo-woo to scientific-minded people. The problem is that there is a clash of communication styles. Maybe it’s a left-brained vs. right-brained thing, I don’t know. They’re not exclusive, but people do seem to have a preferred style.
I tend to be more of an analytical thinker, so when someone tells me something that I recognize as factually inaccurate, it distracts me. My brain stops and says, “Wait a minute. That’s not correct.” Then I kind of stop listening, and start making corrections in my head.
For example, when somebody talks about a homeopathic remedy having “vibrations,” my mind used to groan, “There are no vibrations!” Now I realize that while “vibrations” is not factually true, it has metaphorical truth. Resonance is a useful metaphor for understanding how homeopathic remedies work. It isn’t resonance, it’s like resonance. Even if I discovered some new force that explained homeopathy and had some nice equations for it, for everybody who hadn’t studied the science, a nice metaphor of a tuning fork and a glass would help them grasp the idea much more effectively.
So when alternative people talk about “energy medicine,” all they mean is that it’s not material. Energy can be invisible but it's real. Never mind that the word isn’t used consistently with how science uses it. It is useful as a metaphor that helps people grasp the concept. We don’t know what’s really going on so we’re using a metaphor. It just happens to be one that drives a lot of scientists crazy.
Likewise, when we invoke quantum mechanics, it’s usually not the real physics. It’s being used as an analogy: conventional medicine is to Newtonian physics as holistic medicine is to quantum physics. No, this is not “true,” but it is trying to express a truth. In homeopathy, that truth is that just because there are no molecules from the original substance doesn’t mean the homeopathic remedy can’t work. That’s old physics. There are all kinds of weird things going on in modern physics. You think homeopathy is weird? Never mind that quantum mechanics doesn’t scale up to our size, the analogy is intended to open the door to new possibilities, to remind people that we haven't reached the end of science. However, if you actually have studied quantum mechanics, the facts get in the way of the analogy.
Please hear me: I am not saying that every woo-woo claim is actually true if only the people knew how to talk about it. I’m not saying one method is better than the other. They both have their place. I’m just saying that when one person is talking in metaphors and the other is listening for facts, or vice versa, it’s going to come out badly.
Comments:
So this resonance energy, does it sit on the electro magnetic spectrum? Or is mechanical energy like sound waves? Perhaps nuclear energy? Or even chemical energy? You don’t seem to think it is quantum energy so you’ve ruled that one out.
Or are you proposing a new form of energy, one that does not currently fit into any theory of the universe? Is this energy measurable? If so, how would one measure it?
Most likely it is metaphorical energy. It exists in the mind, a product of the imagination, a retelling of a healing myth using the imagery of modern science. But unlike modern science it is not bound by the laws of the universe, tethered to physical constants. Instead it can fly freely, unbound from the constraints of nature, limited only by the imagination of its tellers.
John, this is a very useful and interesting post. I think that you certainly do clarify why incorrect use of terminology leads many people find homeopathy, and other alternative treatments, very implausible. And I liked your crow analogy.
I note that homeopaths do not like it if others use terms like ‘succussion’ imprecisely. I think its only fair that all parties should use terms precisely - whether they are scientific or homeopathic in origin.
My only gripe is that many homeopaths or people writing on homeopathy don’t seem to use words like ‘energy’, ‘force’ or ‘quantum’ as an analogy or metaphor. I won’t bother posting multiple links as you can find hundreds via a simple Google search.
But having had many discussions with homeopaths I am certain that at least some, but obviously not you, do regard concepts like ‘vital force’ as being real rather than metaphorical. As an example, someone offered to murder me in order to demonstrate the existence of a ‘life force’ and vigorously asserted the non-physicality of homeopathic healing. See http://goodscience.wordpress.com/2007/12/06/merck-chief-of-vaccine-division-admits-vaccines-are-contaminated/#comments
Again, I don’t believe that this is what you think. But I have great difficulty believing that at least a significant minority of homeopaths use such terms literally rather than metaphorically.
Of course, what I meant to write above was -
“But I have great difficulty believing that at least a significant minority of homeopaths use such terms metaphorically rather than literally.
Would this be a good time to say that this is a wonderful example of “truthiness” (and a bit of “scienciness").
Essentially you’re using “truth” in a philosophical sense to compensate for the fact that the claims of “vibrations” or “energy” are not in fact true (in the more tedious mundane sense of being correct, accurate etc.), or at least that there is insufficient evidence to support any claim of it being true.
There’s no doubt that analogy is useful in teaching. However, its most useful application is to provide different ways of approaching or understanding something which is well established and codified. The problem with analogies as they are used in homoeopathy is that they’re not being used to clarify or aid understanding of something well understood, but to cover up the fact that there is no clear understanding of what it is that’s being explained, mainly because there is no evidence for its existence.
This blog is the first I’ve seen that suggests the metaphor of quantum mechanics is that Quantum is to Newtonian physics as Homeopathy is to Evidenced Based medicine. This is a metaphor about how disciplines or bodies of knowledge relate to one another.
Most say either that the homeopathy WORKs by some QM process or that the Homeopathy is somehow analogous in its MECHANISMs to those observed in QM. This is a metaphor about how the subject matter of homeopathy or quantum mechanics relate to one another.
I also like the metaphor of the crow! I would like to ask you to explain the tuning fork and the glass metaphor because I don’t really understand what that would get at.
I’m not suggesting that they intend to use these terms metaphorically. But they are, and they usually don’t know it. Without the understanding of science, how do you know that literally what you are saying sounds like woo-woo nonsense to a scientist?
(And there are those who go deeper trying to come up with ways that physics might explain the homeopathic effect. Those are definitely a minority and I’m not talking about those here.)
I’m not defending it—as I said above, I have some gripes with it too—I’m just trying to understand the miscommunication. When I say, “Science can’t explain how homeopathy works,” and someone mentions water clusters, I wince. It’s possible that science will discover that water clusters are involved, but there is nothing close to proof out there. (And we do understand this: Chris Kurz, who is a physicist, wrote about this in Homeopathic Links, 01/07.) But we homoepaths know these remedies work and we want to make sense out of it and so we grab the best tools to explain it that we can.
And in fact these metaphors do work for most people. I use terms like this sometimes because they help me communicate, although I say, “it is like so and so.” The use of these terms in this way is not “wrong,” any more than any metaphor is wrong. When we’re talking about metaphor, the word “useful” is more relevant. The problem comes when it’s not seen for the metaphor or analogy that it is. And then with “analytical” people, it is not useful. It switches their listening circuit off.
Vital force is a trickier term. It’s not a metaphor, it’s a model. We use a vitalistic model to understand homeopathy. It’s a useful model and there is some truth to it, which is to say that there is something real there. But I don’t know if there really is such a “thing.” Maybe it’s a collection of things?
You have to get the right frequency to make the crystal resonate. You have to get a remedy match to get a homeopathic effect. This metaphor helps to get the idea across that taking a random remedy isn’t likely to do anything.
Actually, yes. But no. So it’s just a wild theory of mine. Some people think quantum physics will explain homeopathy. I don’t. I think it will be something new. Just my belief.
I’d like to repeat something: I am not saying that every woo-woo comment is just a metaphor. Sometimes it’s just wrong.
For example, we are often guilty of a non sequitur like this:
1. Homeopathy seems to depend on some strange behavior of water.
2. Here is an example of a different strange behavior of water.
3. Water is strange.
4. This is evidence for homeopathy.
I don’t mind citing examples of how science doesn’t have all the answers in order to counter the argument that homeopathy can’t possibly work, but I find it pretty frustrating when this is used as a kind of validation.
By the way, homeopathy isn’t only about the water. I just used that as an example.
Everyday scientists get up, go to work and try to answer another question. Answering one, small, possibly insignificant question can take years. In general we have noticed that the more answers we get the more questions arise. Scientists are therefore aware, that, not only do they not have all the answers they don’t even have all the questions.
I think there is a deeper reason for considering Homeopathy Woo than peculiar use of scientific language in metaphor. Scientists are interested in asking questions; when you make a claim we want to know how you are going to test it. Then we find homeopaths say things like:
If you have experienced what I have experienced.
Or
Its intuitive, I have another way of knowing.
Which we know are flawed ways of looking at the world. The drawing of analogies to scientific theories that neither practitioner nor patient understands is the least of your problems.
Sorry John, but there’s something of an elephant in the room here. Fundamentally there appears to be no agreement, even within homoeopathy, of how it works. You just don’t know, as is rather demonstrated by your self-contradiction regarding vital force:
So is it real or isn’t it?
Now if any scientist worth their salt doesn’t know something they will say “I don’t know” and then possibly add “, but if you want me to make an educated guess from what I do know...”. However if homoeopathy relies on a placebo effect, then its efficacy largely depends on the practitioner sounding terribly certain about how the benefit is achieved. In essence (to paraphrase David Colquhoun) you will get best results if you surround your treatment with as much impressive (sciency!) sounding mumbo jumbo as possible.
I do agree that many homoeopaths do produce non-sequiturs which essentially consist of:
- I don’t know how homoeopathy works
- I don’t know how quantum mechanics work
- Therefore homoeopathy must work by quantum mechanics
These are fairly easy to spot as nonsense if you have a science background. But tragically some homoeopaths start to believe these fallacies that they come up with, just because nobody has a solid model for how it works. Because homoeopathy does not have the culture of criticism and self-appraisal that conventional science has, when these beliefs are shown to be non-sensical homoeopaths stick to their guns and retreat into hand-waving and cries of victimisation. Ultimately, nothing is more woo-woo than maintaining a belief that has no solid basis in evidence or, even worse, has strong evidence against it.
I do have some problems with this statement. People use a metaphor or analogy as a means of explaining something. Basically - you don’t know what I’m trying to describe, so I shall compare it to something that you do know.
I’m not sure that people can unknowingly use a term as a metaphor - as a means of describing or explaining. To do that requires some degree of self awareness. It seems more likely to me that they are just using a term without understanding what it means.
Ah, OK. Looks like we agree with each other.
There is something there in a living organism beyond the biochemistry, something that responds to a homeopathic remedy in a ordered, systemic way. We call that something the vital force in homeopathy.
I don’t need to know how real it is, by the way. Homeopathy does not depend on the existence of a thing called the vital force. The vital force is something that is postulated based on homeopathy, not the other way around. It’s a theory that we use to explain our observations.
Imagine observing a local business office without knowing anything more about the greater company. You can see that they are getting direction from somewhere. Is there one boss, several layers of management, a board of directors? There is a lot you don’t know about the management, but somebody is responding to the memos.
My theory is that when someone doesn’t understand a thing but then grasps it using, the metaphor becomes “true” for them. This is especially the case for very abstract things. In a way, the metaphor is true. The problem is that the metaphor isn’t “real,” but they might repeat it as if.
We are obviously getting overly philosophical here. But I still think that the context that you describe is an explanation (erroneous or not).
As an analogy, some Christians believe in the literal truth of the Bible. Others believe that it contains wisdom but that it is presented in an allegorical fashion.
One group clearly use metaphors, but I don’t think that you can say that about the Bible literalists. They believe that the world was created in 7 days. Whether or not that passage in the bible is true or not, the literalists do not quote Genesis as a metaphor, they quote it as fact.
Likewise, if quantum is ‘true’ for a homeopath then that is what they believe. For them it isn’t a metaphor.
Certainly - but of course you wouldn’t have to observe the office for very long to actually see the management in action. Someone is writing those memos, and they will come down and visit the office sometime.
Many people have postulated dualistic notions that we are all more than our bio-chemistry. The trouble is that again and again we can explain things by what we are. God may be in the cracks. But the cracks are getting smaller and smaller.
I agree with woodchopper. However there is another oddity to be explained.
If the vital force some how transcends biochemistry, how can it be influenced by a chemical thing like your remedy, which is made of sugar and or water? How can it then go on to affect the organism as a whole, which is a physical biological entity?
Does it not seem an implausible coincidence to you that the non-corporeal vital force is always influenced to reverse those symptoms that the remedy would cause by biochemical means at reasonable concentrations? I mean the vital force and biochemistry are utterly different so why this consistent symmetrical relationship?
Given that this seems so odd I want to ask one last question in my continued effort to think of a way of measuring the unmeasurable.
If Hanuman had never been born, can you think of a way in which we could predict the possibility of homeopathy and discover it for ourselves?
There is an big difference between faith in the face of facts and misunderstanding the facts.
Again, I’m not saying everybody is doing this. I see a mix of misunderstanding, which I’m saying is using metaphor as fact, and people just using science and/or logic poorly. But there are also people using the science well. Those people aren’t saying that the science has proven anything about homeopathy yet, however, only postulating ideas.
That was just my metaphor. I was trying to give an example of knowing that something is real without knowning the specifics of how it operates.
That is not my experience. Instead I see science ignoring data that does not fit it’s model of reality.
It’s not a chemical thing.
Or at least not only a chemical thing. The law of similars works at larger doses too. (For example, arnica gel, digitalis, etc.) But the homeopathic effect that we are talking about is not explainable through chemistry. It’s something else. That’s why people use the term, “energy medicine.”
Hahnemann did not discover the law of similars. It’s thousands of years old. Hippocrates wrote about it. Hahnemann lived at the time when modern science was being born and he came up with the idea of doing provings, i.e. using experiments instead of intuition to determine what is similar. The non-chemical dose thing came from experimentation and a desire to “do no harm,” i.e. how small a dose can be given and still have an effect.
What like?
I just ask because I just see science as being a means of testing people’s claims. If there is a model of reality, its the reality that can be demonstrated to exist.
Certainly, one can choose to believe in a god that passeth all understanding. But then one must be content with the knowledge that it the belief is only based upon faith.
I can well believe that people will ignore data if it has been collected via a flawed methodology. But what you claim is different. So what data is being ignored only because it doesn’t fit into a ‘model of reality’.
So we cannot detect this vital force itself, but somehow it should be possible to test this ordered, systemic responds.
When a really similar remedy has been given to a patient with a chronic disease, we sort of can predict what will happen. It will give a reaction (aggravation), remove the symptom (cure) and replace it for one that has been there before (return of old symptoms).
Of course it is much more complicated than that, but I think this part should be testable.
Here we disagree. I see science as a desire and means of discovering the order of the universe. Testing is the means, not the end.
Furthermore, I don’t see that the testing must always result in a conclusive answer. I believe it’s okay to say, “There is considerable evidence for this, but we’re not sure.”
While science must concern itself with testable things, it should not dismiss things that are very complex and hard the reduce to simple tests.
Also, science is not just about testing. It is also concerned with just making and organizing observations, such as with alpha taxonomy.
Well, homeopathy and other holistic healing methods for a start.
Yes, I believe that not only the law of similars but also some things about the direction of cure are testable. Certainly it is possible to demonstrate that a holistic response exists, although beyond that I think the tests will be more difficult.
I just read this comment in the Guardian: ‘Homeophobia’ must not be tolerated.
I’ve noticed that he has gotten a lot of flack for mentioning that bit about diamond vs. graphite. But that is off the point and it’s unfortunate that Mr. Roy put it in there. I can see why he did so, leading up to his comments about the polymorphism in water, but it was distracting.
What he is trying to do is refute the assertion that homeopathy goes against the science. He is saying that it might be possible for water to have memory.
I don’t hear him claiming that this proves homeopathy works, only that the claim that homeoapthy can’t possibly work is not in agreement with the science.
One problem, however, is that some others do use this kind of thing to state that science has found a mechanism of action, instead of saying that there are some theories about how it might work.
Yes, it would be difficult, but it should be possible to test a prediction. Although it has to be a very general prediction because there would be all kind of different chronic diseases. But the prediction: remarkable reaction – disappearance complaint – return of old symptoms, should be possible to put in a test.
Could you please be more specific.
Exactly what data has been ignored just because it doesn’t fit science’s model of reality (and not because it only shows very marginal effects or has been collected using a flawed methodology)?
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