Woo-woo
Making a claim about the world that includes other than material or physical things.
Considered by most modern scientists to involve an extraordinary claim without extraordinary evidence to support it.
Combining the material and the mystical. (Spiritual beliefs by themselves are not necessarily considered woo-woo.)Science
The systemic study of the natural world through observation, theorizing, and experiment.
Science is based on an assumption that the universe follows natural laws, and that there is a natural order to things. Science is the attempt to discover this order.
Science involves making hypotheses, testing them via experiments, and forming conclusions based on observations from those experiments.
Materialism
The doctrine that only matter exists, which is another way of saying that only things that are quantifiable are real.
Energy is not the opposite of matter, by the way, but is either a property of matter or not really different from matter, depending on how you look at it. In any case, energy is measurable. (The word "energetic" is sometime used to mean that something is non-material, but most scientists consider that to be woo-woo language.)
Scientism
Science + Materialism. The modern religion of science, containing a central dogma that science can only be concerned with things that are objectively measurable.
Usually when we say "science" in our culture, what we really mean is "scientism," in my view.
The adjective is "scientistic."
Allopathy
The treatment of disease conditions using the medicine that the practitioner feels has the best chance of reducing a particular symptom without causing a worse side effect.
The philosophy behind conventional medicine.
Homeopathy
A system of healing based on:
1) the Law of Similars (like cures like);
2) disease totality (looking at a pattern of symptoms in the whole person, not just individual symptoms);
3) natural healing and the direction of cure (teaching the body to heal itself);
4) using the minimum dose (potentized remedies = non-chemical action).
An important distinction is that homeopathy is not anything that uses potentized substances (#4 above). You need those other things too.
Viewed from a scientistic point of view, homeopathy is woo-woo, due to #4 above. However, homeopaths consider homeopathy to be a science; hence woo-woo science.
