Potentization and the Peripheral Forces of Nature
[Fourie Erasmus]
2.2 HOMOEOPATHIC POTENTIZATIONThe homoeopathic process of preparing
medicine was introduced by Hahnemann in the fifth edition of the Organon, in
1831.
It is characterized by 4 distinguishing features (Gaier 1981:456):
1. It is a purely mechanical and
mathematico-physical process.
2. The procedure involves neither uncertain,
unreliable nor immeasurable factors.
3. The resultant product is stable and can
readily be maintained that way.
4. The process is theoretically illimitable,
though it becomes laboriously time consuming in the higher range of potencies.
4 Potentized substances possess certain
attributes:
1. Quantitative (chemical) reduction linked to
qualitative increment of therapeutic (reactive) property.
2. Physical solubility (even of substances,
like metals, believed to have been insoluble).
3. Physiological assimilability and
bioavailability.
4. Altered therapeutic activity (suppression of
primary (direct), and enhancement of secondary (reactive) effect of drugs.
In homoeopathic potentization three scales are
used:
1.The decimal scale where the first potency containsone tenth part of
the crude substance and each succeeding potency containsone tenth part of the
potency immediately
preceding. The decimal
potency is indicated by the numerals denoting the deconcentration with the
suffix D or X.
2.The centesimal scale where the first potency containsone hundredth
part of the crude substance and each succeeding potency contains one
one-hundredth part of the
potency immediately preceding. The
decimal potency is indicated by the numerals denoting the deconcentration with
the suffix C.
3.The quinquagenimillesimal (50-millesimal) scale, involving a different
method of preparation altogether, resulting in each potency level containing
one fifty thousandth of
the preceding level. For the
purposes of this study the Hahnemannian samplewasserially diluted on a 1:10
scale with 100 succussions between each dilution.
2.3 ANTHROPOSOPHICAL EXTENDED MEDICINE
Anthroposophical extended medicine is one of a number of practical
applications of the work of the Austrian scientist and philosopher, Rudolf
Steiner (1861-1925), the founder of Anthroposophy. Anthroposophy seeks to extend
the understanding of man in a perspective exceeding purely material or
mechanical means. It is a philosophicaland scientific approach to creation,
emerging from, but extending beyond the foundations of natural science. In
particular, it rejects the reductionist approachand recognizes man as
consisting of not only the physical body, but also the soul and spirit (Evans
& Rodger 1992:10).The application of the principles of Anthroposophy has
reached far beyond the purely philosophical. Anthroposophical principles have
been successfully applied to various fields, resulting in an innovative
approach to not only medicine, but also new forms of education, art,
architecture, caring for the handicapped, agriculture and economics (Evans
& Rodger 1992:10). Anthroposophical medicine came about as a result of a
group of medical doctors recognizing that this extended physiology, of
regarding man not only as a physical body, but as an integrated four-fold
being, had remarkable implications for medical treatment.
As Steiner was not a medical doctor, he worked with qualified
practitioners in the development of anthroposophical medicine. He insisted that
it should extend orthodox medicine rather than become an alternative. Thus all
anthroposophical practitioners qualify first in conventional medicine,
thereafter do further study in the understanding of man in health and illness
from the anthroposophical perspective (Evans & Rodger 1992:10).The aim of
anthroposophical medicine is to stimulate the natural healing forces in the
patient. These are the life forces which maintain the physical body and oppose
decay. Steiner describes man in terms of this life force, as a four-fold being
(Evans &Rodger 1992:21).
1. Besides the physical body, he identifies
2. The etheric body. Comprised of non-physical
formative forces, particularly active in growth and nutrition.
3. The astral body. Expressing itself
particularly in the nervous system.
4. The ego. Representing man’s spiritual core
and self-consciousness. This is expressed in the muscular activity and the
blood.
Anthroposophical medicine thus seeks to understand illness in holistic
terms, based on the way these four aspects of man interrelate to form a whole.
Anthroposophical medicine consists of two distinct productions: Wala and Weleda.
Potencies most often employed are produced in a 1:10 dilution ratio and lie
within the decimal scale. Dynamization however, differs significantly from the
Hahnemannian method.
1. The Weleda succession technique requires that the container be moved
in anoscillatory motion
of a figure eight (the sign of infinity)
2. Wala preparations undergo dynamization by a swift, horizontal
movement of the arm from back to front, resulting in a vortex being created
within the container
Anthroposophical potentising continues for a period of two and a half
minutes for plant substances and four minutes for metals, where after the
liquid is allowed to settle
until all movement ceases.
Each respective action; the completion of one period oscillation and one
period vortex creation, is considered to be equivalent to one period of
dynamization in the Hahnemannian method.
2.4
THE ROLE OF POTENTIZATION IN HOMOEOPATHY
By experimental evidence, the effect of homoeopathic preparations in
succussed high dilutions on a living organism is no longer anecdotal.
Positive results in studies on cellular elements, plants and animals
disprove the possibility of a simple placebo effect(Smith &Boericke:1968).
Still, the mechanism of succussed high dilutions and its action on an organic
system remains undecided. Most theories endorse a scheme of some physical
restructuring of the solvent, as a result of both serial dilution and
succussion of the substance(Anagnostatos:1991; Barnard:1965; Smith
&Boericke:1968). Suggested theories commonly focus on complex organised
hydrogen bonded molecules in ethanol-water mixtures, or electromagnetic
coherence and resonance phenomena. In an attempt to understand the mechanism of
succussed high dilutions, the divergence from a causal, biochemical model is necessary,
as much of succussed high dilution medicinal substances fall beyond Avogadro’s
limit, where theoretically no original solute is present in the substance. Even
below this limit (D 24), the chemical bio-availability is usually too
insignificant to produce a biochemical effect on the physical body, or in fact,
to easily justify a causal effect within an orthodox scientific paradigm.
Although investigations within current scientific paradigms are essential, a
non-reductionist approach as suggested by Wallach (2000) may afford a better
opportunity to understanding the phenomenon.
Barnard and Stephenson first hypothesized that it is not the solute but
the structure of the solvent that is the active participant, and thus the
phenomena of interest in
succussed high dilutions, since many remedies are diluted to such an
extent that there is theoretically none of the original solute remaining in the
remedy.
They postulated the hypothesis of stereospecific solvent molecule
polymers formed by association with the original solute (Sacks:1983). These
polymers would self-replicate during the process of serial dilution and
succussion. Addition of monomers in a specific pattern occurs until a certain
length is reached, where after it is broken by the shearing force of the
applied succussion. New, shorter polymers lengthen in the same manner until
maximum dimensions are reached. The process would repeat itself throughout the
dilution and succussion process. These polymers are deemed to be the
informational molecules which are “recognized” by biological systems.
Anagnostatos et al.’s (1991) model of succussed dilutions centred on the
concept of clathrates. He hypothesised the specific organization of molecules
of the solvent in homoeopathic microdilutions which can maintain the properties
of an initial substance not effectively present (Anagnostatos etal.:1991).
This is based on the idea of the formation of shells of organised
hydrogen-bonded molecules of the solvent (clathrates) around aggregates of a
small number of molecules of base substance. Together with different inertial
properties, the succussion forces clusters of base molecules out of their
clathrates, with new clathrates forming around them. The displaced clathrate
leaves a hollow in the matrix, a “core clathrate”, and a “mantle” forms around
this core. At the point where no base substance is present, the application of
succussive force results in core clathrates moving out of mantle clathrates and
stimulate the formation of new clathrates. This process is perpetuated to
result in a specific molecular matrix, bearing the informational imprint of the
original substance (Ross 1997:8).The work of Resch and Gutmann (1991) pointed
to a highly organised structure inherent in water which is able to be
substance-specifically modified by interaction with an added substance or
solute. It was proposed that a “super molecular system” forms within succussed
solutions. This is distinguishable from normal liquid water through “solvation
spheres” or “hydration shells” forming around hydrophilic molecules, and
a network of “inner surface” molecules at the interface of hydrophobic
molecules. Hydrophobic molecules within a liquid may adopt structural
information from the added substance. This would be preserved within its
oscillating expression and, in turn, exhibit a strong influence on the
oscillating pattern of the liquid as a whole. The dilution process results in
an interface between the solute and the solvent, which allows for the transfer
and integration of the structural information content into the new dilution.
Berezin (1991) presented a model based on isotopic diversity. He
proposes a model of homoeopathic action centred on the patterning of stable
isotopes in water.
This argument is based on the notion that the succussion process results
in a non-equilibrium state within the liquid, with an excess of free energy.
This would make for
a system vulnerable to pattern formation. Dissolved molecules would be
able to cause re-ordering and positional arrangement of isotopes within water,
water having three isotopic degrees of freedom; H to D and 170 or 180 to 160.As
a change of a singular neutron in a substance with atomic mass 200 could cause
a variation of 0,5%, it would follow that such isotopic change could cause
substantial variations in atomic vibrational frequencies, bond strengths and
changes in chemical activity. Isotopic combinations provide immense information
storage capability. Fragments would be sufficient to provide the structural
information requirements to a next stage dilution. An example of such a
degenerate system is that of crystallisation where a „micro-change‟ in
the lattice structure will result in an ordered structure formation conducive
to that change throughout the rest of the crystal.
Current theories on the mechanism of homoeopathy more and more demand
the ability of lateral thinking. Within quantum theory the opportunity may have
appeared whereby the link between consciousness and physical matter may move
from a pseudo-scientific regard into the domain of true science. The
development of this notion has been expanded from the works of Bohm,
Schrödinger and Bohr amongst others (Davies &Brown 1986:32). In spite of
rigorous care and precision, scientific research in homoeopathy tends to show
unrepeatable and anomalous results. It has been suggested that this may not be
completely independent of, and un-influenced by the researcher. The „Pauli
–effect‟ is a simple example of the observer as unintentional participant
in a scientific experiment (McEvoy & Zarate 1991:96).
Robert Oppenheimer stated that “the physical world is not completely
determinate. There are predictions you can make about it but they are
statistical; and any event has
in it the nature of a surprise, of the miracle, of something that you
could not figure out. Physics is predictable-but within limits; its world is
ordered but not completely causal”. He also remarks that “every atomic event is
individual. It is not, in its essentials, reproducible” (Whitmont 1991:4).
Wallach (2000) proposed a non-local interpretation of the homoeopathic
phenomenon. He suggests that a more precise explanation of the mechanism of
homoeopathy is more likely to be found in conjectures made around concepts
based on quantum theory, rather than theorizing within a purely physico-chemical
paradigm.
The concept on non-locality is perhaps best illustrated in the EPR
paradox. According to the Copenhagen interpretation presented by Bohr, the
existence of an external world independent of an observer is problematic. One
is in effect, unable to solve the problem of how the universe exists without an
observer looking at it. Dealing with phenomena, appearances and regularities in
phenomena, he essentially claims that reality is ultimately ambiguous and
unspecifiable, as affirmed in the EPR paradox. Herein Bohr refuted Einstein’s
locality principle of separateness of phenomena. Bohr basically states that
quantum mechanics does not permit a separation between the observer and the
observed. Any observed phenomenon (in the case of the EPR thought experiment;
the two electrons) and the observer are part of a single system - independent
of distance and the speed of light, and therefore, time. It has thus been
stated that the EPR experiment does not demonstrate the incompleteness of
quantum theory, but the naiveté of assuming local conditions in atomic systems.
Once they have been connected, atomic systems are never separate (McEvoy &
Zarate 1991:166). Walach developed this concept of non-locality to be applied
to the mechanism of homoeopathy. This has also been demonstrated in the works
of Edward Whitmont, who emphasises that the homoeopathic approach is finalistic
and phenomenalistic, rather than causalistic –thus a symbol, representational
of a whole.
It was Bohm that suggested that in the implicate order, mind and matter
can be looked at in a similar way, that quantum mechanics may see mind and
matter as enfolded.
He has further stated that within the framework of quantum mechanics,
phenomenal reality comes about from a deeper order in which it is enfolded or
implied. In order to extrapolate on the meaning of this innate property of
implication in the physical universe, he uses the example of the hologram; each
part of the photographic plate contains information about the whole. The whole
is unfolding from each region on the photographic plate (Davies &Brown
1986:118). Wallach (2000) also suggests that the effect of the homoeopathic
remedy is not a causal one as would be explained in an orthodox sense, but
rather through a system of “signs” or concepts.
Thus a universal non-local and a causal means are present within the
substance. This universal interconnectedness of all creation may be the
mechanism whereby homoeopathy acts through consciousness. The work of Carl Jung
would underline this very strongly. The occurrence of archetypal symbols and
the universal meaning contained therein is very appropriate in the scientific
domain –from physics and psychology to homoeopathy and philosophy (Jung
1993:384). This was also a conclusion reached in a discussion between Jung and
Pauli; that psychological states and physical events could
be a causally connected through an element of meaning (Davies 2001:38).
The homoeopathic remedy thus becomes a symbol with a specific element of
meaning. The meaning that is so contained in the remedy as symbol, may also
serve as a
deeper understanding of the fundamental principle in homoeopathy:
“Similia Similibus Curentur” – let like be cured by like. It is important to
also extend this concept to Anthroposophy, which is based ultimately, on a
foundation of “spiritual science” where the unseen is in fact the template for
physical matter and its behaviour.
Speaking on the nature of man, Rudolf Steiner had remarked that “(the
understanding of man) rests upon the recognition of a hidden something behind
that which is
manifest to the outer senses and to the intellect brought to bear upon
their perceptions. These senses and this intellect can apprehend only a part of
all that (is) the total
human entity...” (Wilson 1985:10). The words of Oppenheimer, to some
degree, are echoed in Steiner’s insistence that total material fails to account
for the complexities
of the universe and of human existence.
It may be
concluded that the effect of
vorticity (Wala), non-linearity (Weleda) and
linearity (Hahnemannian) in
the applied force of
dynamization, all serve to
alter the remedy to varying extents.
6.1 CONCLUSIONS
The results of
this study showed
that statistically significant differences were observed in the chemical shift values of
the CH2 and CH3 signals for all three methods
investigated. Relative integration
values showed significant differences between
the Wala and
Weleda method for
the CH3 signal, and between the Wala and Hahnemannian method
for both OH and CH3signals. Based
on the results
of this investigation, it may thus
be reasoned that
the method of dynamization
does indeed play
a significant and
crucial role in establishing a
particular molecular environment
within a succussed
dilution, and therefore, in the development of
a distinct physico-chemical identity
of a remedy. It may
therefore also follow that the
hypothesis that different methods of dynamization exert an
individualizing effect on a remedy and thus may imply inherent differences, is
satisfied.
External factors
Although external factors in
this study are controlled as
far as possible, concerns may still exist regarding
the exact nature of the potentising process, particularly in
the production of
Anthroposophical samples. Within Anthroposophy, certain
prohibitions are placed
on the production
process, e.g. potentising may
only be carried
out between 2.30 h.
and 10.30 h. and between 14.30 h.
and 22 h. Also,
when potentising metals,
the day of the
month must be
indicated as suitable
according to the
Wala and Weleda Potentising Calendars;
potentising is prohibited
during certain celestial occurrences, e.g. sun and moon
eclipses. The extent of
these theoretical influences
can not easily
be verified scientifically. Still, strict observations of these
parameters establish guidelines in standardizing samples. Chemical influences,
e.g. the absorption
of moisture during
the potentising processand
variations in factors like at atmospheric oxygen may play a role, one may
also question excessive control
as unnatural to the potentization process. One must therefore attempt to replicate the
potentization process as is done in
practise as closely
as possible, with
as few variations
as possible (Davies 2001). (und nicht zu vergessen in Handpotensation gibt es unterschiedliche
Druck bei unterschiedliche Personen)
[George Adams]
Introduction
Protective Geometry and Amnesia
One of the minor pleasures of studying homeopathy is its sense of
history, which contrasts so sharply with the ahistoricity of mainstream
medicine.
Most doctors feel that there was no real medicine before the discovery
of Penicillin (but this is little more than a feeling, for there is virtually
no
teaching of medical history in medical schools).
Before Penicillin all seems to have been darkness, pierced only by an
occasional brilliant shaft of light associated with a great name
(Harvey/Virchow/Pasteur) but since 1940 all is clarity and reason.
This is, of course, a highly distorted image.
In homeopathy, we have a much greater sense of continuity, indeed we
rest too much on our laurels, accepting far too readily the opinions of famous
teachers of the past.
Yet while every word of Hahnemann or Kent is treated with exaggerated
reverence, other important historic discoveries originating in homeopathy are
almost forgotten.
Hering: introduced nitrates into medicine (Glon.) a fact which was
recalled recently in the journal Circulation, but almost forgotten by his heirs
in homeopathy.
Reilly: in researching his recent work on hayfever, discovered that
hayfever was first correctly attributed to pollen allergy by Blackley, a
British homeopath.
Many other episodes of intellectual amnesia among homeopaths could be
cited.
This seems to be mainly a short-term memory loss; more recent
contributions are less likely to be remembered than older ones! It is for this
reason that I make no apology for reprinting, from time to time, classical but
neglected pieces of work.
Following, “Potentization and the Peripheral Forces of Nature” by George
Adams, based on a lecture given at the 1961 British Homeopathic Congress.
To judge from the congress report, and the recollections of those who
were present, it aroused great excitement at the time.
Certainly it has important implications for the nature of extreme
dilutions, implications which are not widely recognized and have not been
developed, but instead have fallen victim to our collective short-term memory
loss.
May I begin by saying that I feel it a great privilege and satisfaction
to be invited as a layman to address this Congress.
My theme will be to tell of new ideas and discoveries - well founded,
though still in their initial stages - which, among other things, should
contribute to the long desired scientific explanation of the effectiveness of
high potencies in medicine.
Let me remind you to begin with where the difficulty lies.
For generations past the effectiveness of high potencies has been a fact
of experience for the physician and of untold benefit to countless patients.
Also in recent decades, in the work of L. Kolisko, Boyd and others, it
has been experimentally established by biological as well as purely physical
and
chemical reactions.
Yet it is difficult to account for, both in the light of rough and ready
common sense and of prevailing scientific notions.
The chemist who surmises that a particular component present in small
quantities in a solution or mixture, is responsible for some physical, or
physiological effect, will contrive by distillation, crystallization or the
like to concentrate it.
His theory is confirmed if the effect increases; thus with Madame Curie,
when with endless pains she extracted a few grams of radium from tons of
pitchblende.
Why, in the preparation of homeopathic remedies, do we dilute instead of
concentrating? I am, of course, aware that potencies are no mere dilutions.
H.: “Dilution alone, say when a grain of common salt is dissolved,
produces the merest water. Diluted with a vast amount of water, the salt simply
disappears. This never makes it into a medicine. Yet by our well-prepared
dynamizations the medicinal virtue of common salt is wondrously revealed and
enhanced.”
Nevertheless, there is no denying that among other things the
potentizing or dynamizing process does dilute the substance and in so doing
brings forth its virtue.
To quote Hahnemann again:
“The homeopathic dilution of medicaments brings about no reduction, but
on the contrary a true enhancement of their medicinal virtues; thus our
dilutions represent a truly wonderful unveiling, nay more, a calling-to-life of
the medicinal and healing spirit of the substance.
” The down-to-earth, common sense difficulty of understanding how this
can be, is reinforced by the prevailing molecular theories of matter, according
to which the number of molecules in a gram-molecule of any substance is of the
order of 10 23.
The exact figure, variously known as Avogadro’s or Loschmidt’s number,
has been found consistently by several methods.
In terms of molecular theory, therefore, starting with a normal solution
and with the normal technique of potentization, by the 23rd or 24th decimal
potency only a single molecule would be left, and from then onward it is ever
more unlikely that even this will be there in the medicine bottle or ampule
bearing the name of the substance! Ways of escape from this theoretical dilemma
have indeed been suggested by the more recent theories of physics.
The 19th Century conceived the molecules or their constituent
atoms more or less naïvely as ultimate and self-contained pieces of matter.
The atoms and subatomic ‘particles’ - protons, electrons, and so on, in
terms of which even the chemical affinities and biological effects of substance
are today explained - have become purely ideal entities figuring in recondite
mathematical equations.
Thinking of the mysterious duality of particle and wave, the
philosophically minded physicist can even aver with scientific reason that with
its sphere of influence each single atom is co-extensive with the entire universe.
Some people therefore pin their hopes on a future science of biophysics
in which the subtle influences of life will be illumined by the idealized
conceptions of atomic physics.
Yet it should not be forgotten that the experiments and discoveries on which
the latter are based have been increasingly remote from the realm of living
things, depending as they do on the deliberate enhancement of conditions - high
values, high-tension electric fields and the resulting radiations and
‘bombardments’ - downright inimical to life.
It is therefore better to regard the apparent gulf between the
experience of homeopathic medicine and the conventional scientific outlook in a
wider historic setting, not only in terms of the ever-changing theories of
Twentieth-Century physics.
The growth of physical science from the times of Galileo and Torricelli,
Newton, Boyle and Huyghens, Dalton, Lavoisier and Faraday down to the present
day is a wonderful chapter in the intellectual and spiritual history of
mankind.
Hahnemann’s long life (1755–1843) spans an important period in this
development, leading from the celestial mechanics of the 18th to the
electro-magnetic theories and growing chemical discoveries of the 19th
century.
Still in his youth when hydrogen and the composition of water are
discovered.
Dalton enunciates the atomic theory,
Cavendish in 1772 confirms the inverse-square law in electrostatics,
Oersted and Ohm make their discoveries on the electric current in the
1820s, and Faraday’s electro-magnetic researches culminate in 1831.
In 1828 Wöhler’s synthesis of urea undermines the old vitalist ideas of
organic chemistry which Hahnemann (a creative chemist) still entertained in
common with his contemporaries.
It is well to remember this when reading
Hahnemann’s forms of expression, which as I shall hope to show are
scientifically important to this day.
For the vitalism, inevitably abandoned in its old philosophic form, the
vagueness of which stood in the way of true research, can now be reborn on a
clear and scientific basis.
Hahnemann’s vitalism underlies his use of the word ‘dynamic’ and the
noun ‘dynamis’ which he adopts, or coins for himself.
“From the beginning,” says Tischner, “his notion of the vital force
prevailing in the living body was essentially spiritual”.
He attributes illnesses to immaterial, dynamic causes, and in his essay
of 1801 describes the medicinal effects of high dilutions as ‘dynamic’ rather
than ‘atomic’ - a contrast the literal significance of which will, I hope,
emerge in the course of this lecture.
We also have to remember that the clear distinction of energy and matter
and the law of conservation of energy were not yet current in Hahnemann’s day.
The ‘mechanical equivalent of heat’ was discovered by Mayer and Joule
almost exactly at the time of his death (1842–1845).
Heat, light and other energies - bio- and psychological as well as
physical, even including ‘animal magnetism,’ for example - were until then
still being
thought of as tenuous if not imponderable substances.
The supposed substance of warmth was called ‘caloric’ Lavoisier in 1789
still included heat and light among the chemical elements.
Rumford’s experiment was widely supposed to have released the ‘caloric’
from the iron made hot by friction.
Even in 1824, when in his Puissance motrice du feu Carnot in effect
discovered the second law of thermodynamics, soon to become a cornerstone of
physics, he still interpreted it in terms of ‘caloric’ Perhaps this idea of
imponderable essences is in the light of present-day ideas no longer quite so
wide of the mark as it might have seemed sixty years ago.
It should at any rate be borne in mind when reading Hahnemann’s
expressions, when for example he describes as feinstofflich, ‘delicately
substantial,’ or as ‘virtual’ or ‘well-nigh spiritual’ the medicinal effects
set free from the material during the rhythmic processes of dilution,
trituration and succussion.
I have deliberately drawn attention to these aspects.
The history of science is not the unidirectional process which neatly
finished textbooks lead one to suppose.
Many streams run side by side; the most essential discoveries,
experimental or theoretical, may lie unnoticed for decades till a fresh aspect
emerges to reveal their importance.
Let us consider for a moment in a human and historic spirit what it was
that gave the orthodox scientific outlook its strength, accounting too for the
intolerance with which the claims of homeopathy have only too often been met.
It was the combination of an instinctive and robust materialism with the
mathematical clarity and cogency of theories supported by experiment and
observation.
The instinctive materialism is well illustrated by the story of
Dr. Johnson’s angry reaction after listening to a sermon in which Bishop
Berkeley put forward his idealistic theory of the world.
‘I refute it thus,’ the learned doctor exclaims, kicking his foot
against a stone.
In scientific atomism until the close of the 19th Century,
Johnson’s stone - vastly reduced in spatial but proportionately grown in spiritual
dimensions - became the highly satisfying football, better perhaps the
baseball, of science.
For it is this intuitive feeling of the ultimate reality of tangible
material things which underlies the older forms of scientific atomism.
It is a very genuine element in the consciousness of Western man
throughout the Seventeenth to 19th Centuries, inseparable from the
age of exploration, the growth of natural history and of artistic naturalism,
the dawn of industrialism.
Nor is it out of harmony with the patriarchal, simply believing,
strongly Old Testament forms of religion then prevailing.
Yet the instinctive materialism is reinforced by another, more ideal
factor - and this alone accounts for the spiritual tenacity of a materialistic
science - namely, the confidence born of the intellectual clarity and probity
of mathematical thinking.
It is too apt to be forgotten how many purely ideal, in other words
spiritual, elements are built into the resulting scientific system.
Mathematics is an activity of pure thought, and in the past (if not in
the extreme formalism and empty nominalism which is now the fashion) was never
quite remote from philosophical and even religious thinking.
Certainly Isaac Newton, whom we may justly think of as the founder of
modern physics, was in his own dominant interests a philosopher, even a
theologian, as for example his correspondence with Henry More and the Cambridge
Platonists reveals.
For all the scientific care and scepticism sincerely voiced in his
‘Hypotheses non fingo’ he - who was afterwards to describe his Universal Space
as ‘the sensorium of God’ - built into his Principia, in formal quality if not
in intention, an almost theological masonry of thought.
The implications of it were but inverted by the French atheists and
rationalists! Over a century later, other Englishmen of philosophic and
religious disposition brought a like clarity of geometrical imagination and
mathematical analysis into the rising science of electric and magnetic forces.
I refer, of course, to Faraday and Clerk Maxwell.
It is this mathematical element in physics which gives it strength and
power - power for technical uses, strength in its influence upon our mental
outlook.
There is an element of tragedy in this, for the resulting system becomes
a rigid framework barring access to the more spiritual aspects of reality, of
which the truths of homeopathic medicine are an example.
But the spiritual power of geometrical and mathematical thinking which
has helped build this framework can also help in the much needed release.
Of this I am about to tell.
Till about half a century ago - the time of
Einstein and Minkowski - the space in which the real events of the universe
were supposed to be taking place was that of Euclid, the geometry of which we
learn at school. It is the space measured in finite and rigid lengths, or areas
and volumes based on the measurement of length.
It is determined by the well-known laws of parallelism and of the right
angle, as in the theorem of Pythagoras or in the statement that opposite sides
of a parallelogram are equal.
The same type of space was held to prevail down to the smallest and up
to the largest dimensions.
Inward and outward, the identical scale of length leads to the
millimicrons of atomic science and to the parsecs and light-years of
astronomical speculation.
What happens when a straight line is extended to the infinite, was held
to be an idle question, of philosophic interest perhaps, but beyond the
effective range of science.
Occasionally, scientists of the 19th Century - W. K.
Clifford, for example - reflected that cosmic space might after all be
‘non-Euclidean,’ its structure differing from the Euclidean to so slight an
extent as to escape our instruments of measurement.
But neither this nor Einstein’s four-dimensional space-time did more
than modify the profoundly Euclidean - I might also call it earthly - way of
thinking about space and the realities it contains. This is so taken for
granted as to be difficult to describe; few people realize that there is any
other way.
Space is conceived as a vast empty container - the Irishman’s box
without sides, top or bottom - populated (in some regions more and in others
less densely) by point-centered bodies sending their forces and radiations to
one another.
It becomes a field of manifold potential forces, but the real sources of
activity are, once again, point-centered - material or at least quasi-material
- bodies.
Apart from these, there would be emptiness, mere nothing.
That, surely, is a fair description, both of the popular idea and of the
mathematical analysis.
As against this, I now have to tell of what opens out quite new
possibilities, both of pure thought and of insight into the realities of
nature.
For in the 17th to 19th Centuries, while physicists
and astronomers were busily applying to their problems the ancient geometry of
Euclid - rendered more handy and more elegant but in no way altered by the new
analytical methods of Descartes, Leibniz and Newton - among pure mathematicians
a new form of geometry was arising.
It is a form which, while including the Euclidean among other aspects,
is far more comprehensive, also more beautiful and more profound.
I refer to the school of geometry variously known as protective
geometry, modern synthetic geometry, or the geometry of position.
In the Seventeenth Century its truths began to be apprehended by the
astronomer Kepler and the mystical philosopher Pascal, also by
[George Adams]
Projective Geometry and Amnesia
One of the minor pleasures of studying homeopathy is its sense of
history, which contrasts so sharply with the ahistoricity of mainstream
medicine. Most doctors feel that there was no real medicine before the
discovery of Penicillin (but this is little more than a feeling, for there is
virtually no teaching of medical history in medical schools). Before Penicillin
all seems to have been darkness, pierced only by an occasional brilliant shaft
of light associated with a great name (Harvey, Virchow or Pasteur) but since
1940 all is clarity and reason. This is, of course, a highly distorted image.
In homeopathy, we have a much greater sense of continuity, indeed we
rest too much on our laurels, accepting far too readily the opinions of famous
teachers of the past. Yet while every word of Hahnemann or Kent is treated with
exaggerated reverence, other important historic discoveries originating in
homeopathy are almost forgotten. Hering it was who introduced nitrates into
medicine (Glonoine) - a fact which was recalled recently in the journal Circulation,
but almost forgotten by his heirs in homeopathy. Reilly, in researching his
recent work on hayfever, discovered that hayfever was first correctly
attributed to pollen allergy by Blackleg, a British homeopath.
Many other episodes of intellectual amnesia among homeopaths could be
cited. This seems to be mainly a short-term memory loss; more recent
contributions are less likely to be remembered than older ones! It is for this
reason that I make no apology for reprinting, from time to time, classical but
neglected pieces of work. The paper which follows, "Potentization and the
peripheral forces of nature" by George Adams, is based on a lecture given
at the 1961 British Homeopathic Congress. To judge from the congress report,
and the recollections of those who were present, it aroused great excitement at
the time. Certainly it has important implications for the nature of extreme
dilutions, implications which are not widely recognized, and have not been
developed, but instead have fallen victim to our collective short-term memory
loss.
It is well to remember this when reading Hahnemann's forms of
expression, which as I shall hope to show are scientifically important to this
day. For the vitalism, inevitably abandoned in its old philosophic form, the
vagueness of which stood in the way of true research, can now be reborn on a
clear and scientific basis. Hahnemann's vitalism underlies his use of the word
'dynamic' and the noun 'dynamis' which he adopts, or coins for himself.
"From the beginning,” says Tischner, “his notion of the vital force
prevailing in the living body was essentially spiritual."4 He attributes
illnesses to immaterial, dynamic causes, and in his essay of 1801 describes the
medicinal effects of high dilutions as 'dynamic' rather than 'atomic' - a
contrast the literal significance of which will, I hope, emerge in the course
of this lecture. We also have to remember that the clear distinction of energy
and matter and the law of conservation of energy were not yet current in
Hahnemann's day. The 'mechanical equivalent of heat' was discovered by Mayer
and Joule almost exactly at the time of his death (1842-45). Heat, light and
other energies - bio- and psycho- logical as well as physical, even including
'animal magnetism,' for example - were until then still being thought of as
tenuous if not imponderable substances. The supposed substance of warmth was
called 'caloric.' Lavoisier in 1789 still included heat and light among the
chemical elements. Rumford's experiment was widely supposed to have released
the 'caloric' from the iron made hot by friction. Even in 1824, when in his
Puissance motrice du feu Carrot in effect discovered the second law of
thermodynamics, soon to become a cornerstone of physics, he still interpreted
it in terms of 'caloric.' Perhaps this idea of imponderable essences is in the
light of present-day ideas no longer quite so wide of the mark as it might have
seemed sixty years ago. It should at any rate be borne in mind when reading
Hahnemann's expressions, when for example he describes as feinstofflich,
'delicately substantial,' or as 'virtual' or 'well-nigh spiritual' the
medicinal effects set free from the material during the rhythmic processes of
dilution, trituration and succussion.
I have deliberately drawn attention to these aspects. The history of
science is not the unidirectional process which neatly finished textbooks lead
one to suppose. Many streams run side by side; the most essential discoveries,
experimental or theoretical, may lie unnoticed for decades till a fresh aspect
emerges to reveal their importance.
Let us consider for a moment in a human and historic spirit what it was
that gave the orthodox scientific outlook its strength, accounting too for the
intolerance with which the claims of homeopathy have only too often been met.
It was the combination of an instinctive and robust materialism with the
mathematical clarity and cogency of theories supported by experiment and
observation. The instinctive materialism is well illustrated by the story of
Dr. Johnson's angry reaction after listening to a sermon in which Bishop
Berkeley put forward his idealistic theory of the world. 'I refute it thus,'
the learned doctor exclaims, kicking his foot against a stone. In scientific
atomism until the close of the Nineteenth Century, Johnson's stone - vastly
reduced in spatial but proportionately grown in spiritual dimensions - became
the highly satisfying football, better perhaps the baseball, of science. For it
is this intuitive feeling of the ultimate reality of tangible material things
which underlies the older forms of scientific atomism. It is a very genuine
element in the consciousness of Western man throughout the 17th to
19th Centuries, inseparable from the age of exploration, the growth
of natural history and of artistic naturalism, the dawn of industrialism. Nor
is it out of harmony with the patriarchal, simply believing, strongly Old
Testament forms of religion then prevailing.
Yet the instinctive materialism is reinforced by another, more ideal
factor - and this alone accounts for the spiritual tenacity of a materialistic
science - namely, the confidence born of the intellectual clarity and probity
of mathematical thinking. It is too apt to be forgotten how many purely ideal,
in other words spiritual, elements are built into the resulting scientific
system. Mathematics is an activity of pure thought, and in the past (if not in
the extreme formalism and empty nominalism which is now the fashion) was never
quite remote from philosophical and even religious thinking. Certainly Isaac
Newton, whom we may justly think of as the founder of modem physics, was in his
own dominant interests a philosopher, even a theologian, as for example his
correspondence with Henry More and the Cambridge Platonists reveals. For all
the scientific care and skepticism sincerely voiced in his 'Hypotheses non
fingo' he - who was afterwards to describe his Universal Space as 'the
sensorium of God' - built into his Principia, in formal quality if not in
intention, an almost theological masonry of thought. The implications of it
were but inverted by the French atheists and rationalists! Over a century
later, other Englishmen of philosophic and religious disposition brought a like
clarity of geometrical imagination and mathematical analysis into the rising science
of electric and magnetic forces. I refer, of course, to Faraday and Clerk
Maxwell. It is this mathematical element in physics which gives it strength and
power - power for technical uses, strength in its influence upon our mental
outlook. There is an element of tragedy in this, for the resulting system
becomes a rigid framework barring access to the more spiritual aspects of
reality, of which the truths of homeopathic medicine are an example. But the
spiritual power of geometrical and mathematical thinking which has helped build
this framework can also help in the much needed release. Of this I am about to
tell.
Till about half a century ago - the time of Einstein and Minkowski - the
space in which the real events of the universe were supposed to be taking place
was that of Euclid, the geometry of which we learn at school. It is the space
measured in finite and rigid lengths, or areas and volumes based on the
measurement of length. It is determined by the well-known laws of parallelism
and of the right angle, as in the theorem of Pythagoras or in the statement
that opposite sides of a parallelogram are equal. The same type of space was
held to prevail down to the smallest and up to the largest dimensions. Inward
and outward, the identical scale of length leads to the millimicrons of atomic
science and to the parsecs and light-years of astronomical speculation. What
happens when a straight line is extended to the infinite, was held to be an
idle question, of philosophic interest perhaps, but beyond the effective range
of science.
Occasionally, scientists of the 19th Century - W.K. Clifford,
for example - reflected that cosmic space might after all be 'non-Euclidean,'
its structure differing from the Euclidean to so slight an extent as to escape
our instruments of measurement. But neither this nor Einstein's
four-dimensional space-time did more than modify the profoundly Euclidean - I
might call it earthly - way of thinking about space and the realities it
contains. This is so taken for granted as to be difficult to describe; few
people realize that there is any other way. Space is conceived as a vast empty
container - the Irishman's box without sides, top or bottom - populated (in
some regions more and in others less densely) by point-centered bodies sending
their forces and radiations to one another. It becomes a field of manifold
potential forces, but the real sources of activity are, once again,
point-centered - material or at least quasi-material - bodies. Apart from
these, there would be emptiness, mere nothing. That, surely, is a fair
description, both of the popular idea and of the mathematical analysis.
As against this, I now have to tell of what opens out quite new possibilities,
both of pure thought and of insight into the realities of nature. For in the 17th
to 19th Century Centuries, while physicists and astronomers were busily
applying to their problems the ancient geometry of Euclid - rendered more handy
and more elegant but in no way altered by the new analytical methods of
Descartes, Leibniz and Newton - among pure mathematicians a new form of
geometry was arising. It is a form which, while including the Euclidean among
other aspects, is far more comprehensive, also more beautiful and more
profound. I refer to the school of geometry variously known as projective
geometry, modern synthetic geometry, or the geometry of position. In the 17th
Century its truths began to be apprehended by the astronomer Kepler and the
mystical philosopher Pascal, also by Pascal's teacher, Girard Desargues, a less
known but historically important figure. It was, however, in the early 19th
Century, about the last twenty years of Hahnemann's own life, that the new
geometry really began to blossom forth. Once again, French mathematicians -
among them Poncelet, Gergonne and Michel Charles - were the pioneers, soon to
be followed by a few brilliant thinkers in Switzerland and Germany, England,
Italy and other countries. Largely unnoticed save among pure mathematicians,
upon whose thought it was to have a deep and lasting influence, it grew into an
ever wider insight, which by the end of the century was seen to embrace most if
not all of the known forms of geometry, Euclidean and non-Euclidean alike.
Today, as I shall presently contend, it opens out new ways of understanding nature
- above all, living nature and the subtler, more spiritual forces which the
intuitive genius of Hahnemann was perceiving.
Like that of Euclid, projective geometry is not only a discipline of
pure thought, resting securely on its own ideal premises or axioms; it is also
related to practical experience, though to begin with in a rather different
direction. Our experience of the spatial world is above all visual and tactile.
There are indeed other and less conscious senses - senses more 'proprioceptive'
of our own spatial body both in itself and in its interaction with the world,
such as the sense of movement and that of balance - to which our spatial
awareness and geometrical faculty are largely due. But in our outward
consciousness it is the sense of touch and that of sight which reinforce and
confirm geometrical reasoning and imagination. Now the geometry of Euclid
relates above all to the sense of touch; hence too its natural connection with
a scientific outlook taking its start from tangible material things. The inch,
the foot, the yard, derive from our own body.
We measure as we touch the earth, foot by foot and step by step, or in
the rhythmic act of measurement with fingertip and yard-stick. By tactile
experiences
we confirm the constant distance between parallels, the symmetry laws of
the right angle. We even prove the first theorem of Euclid by the imagined
tactile experiment of applying one triangle to another. But our experience of
space is also visual, and as such far more extensive, more manifold and
satisfying.
We see things we can never touch by hand or foot or tool; our vision
reaches to the infinite horizon and to the stars. Now in the 15th to
17th Century the beginnings of modern science coincided with the
increasingly naturalistic art of the Renaissance. Both were inspired by the
same love of nature and wish to penetrate her secrets. So as to give an
outwardly 'true' picture of the scenes of landscape and the forms and works of
men, artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Duerer studied the science of
perspective vision, which from its practical and aesthetic applications
presently gave birth to a new purely geometrical discipline - to wit,
projective geometry. The latter therefore naturally deals not only with
tangible and finite forms but with the infinite distance of space, represented
as these are by the vanishing lines and vanishing points of perspective. Thus
in the new geometry the infinitely distant is treated realistically, in a way
that was foreign to the classical geometry of Euclid and the Greeks.
To include the infinitely distant, sometimes referred to as the 'ideal
elements' of space, no less definitely than those at a finite distance, is a
bold step in thought, and is rewarded by a twofold insight of an importance
hitherto unsuspected for the science of living things. Attention focused no
longer on rigid forms such as the square or the circle, but on mobile types of
form, changing into one another in the diverse aspects of perspective, or other
kinds of geometrical transformation. In Euclid, for instance, we take our start
from the rigid form of the circle, sharply distinguished from the ellipse,
parabola and hyperbola, as are these from one another. In projective geometry
it is the 'conic section' in general of which the pure idea arises in the mind
and of which various constructions are envisaged. As in real life the circular
opening of a lampshade will appear in many forms of ellipse while moving about
the room, or as the opening of a bicycle lamp projects on to the road in sundry
hyperbolic forms, so in pure thought we follow the transformations from one
form of conic section to another. Strictly speaking, the 'conic section' of
projective geometry is neither circle, ellipse, parabola nor hyperbola; it is a
purely ideal form, out of which all of these arise, much as in Goethe's botany
the ‘archetypal leaf’ is not identical with any particular variety or
metamorphosis of leaf (foliage leaf varying in shape from node to node, petal,
carpel and so on) but underlies them all. The new geometry begets a quality of
spatial thinking akin to the metamorphoses of living form.
The other insight is perhaps even more important. Projective geometry
recognizes as the deepest law of spatial structure an underlying polarity which
to begin with may be called, in simple and imaginative language, a polarity of
expansion and contraction, the terms being meant in a qualitative and very
mobile sense. (If I now illustrate by using, after all, some of the more rigid
and symmetrical forms, the limitations of which I have just referred to, it is
only to make it easier by starting with familiar pictures.) Think of a sphere -
not the internal volume but the pure form of the surface. One sphere can only
differ from another as to size; apart from that, the form is the same. Now the
expansion and contraction of a sphere leads to two ultimate limits. Contracted
to the uttermost, the sphere turns into a point; expanded, into a plane. The
latter transformation, though calling for more careful reflection, is no less necessary
than the former. A large spherical surface is less intensely curved than a
small one; in other words, it is flatter. So long as it can still grow flatter,
a sphere has not yet been expanded to the utmost limit, which can only be the
absolute flatness of a plane.
The above experiment in thought - the ultimate contraction and expansion
of a sphere - leads in the right direction. Point and plane prove to be the
basic entities of three-dimensional space - that is, the space of our universe
and of the human imagination. Speaking qualitatively, the point is the
quintessence of contraction, the plane of expansion. Here comes the fundamental
difference as against both the old geometry of Euclid and the naive and rather
earthly spatial notions which culminate in a onesidedly atomistic outlook. For
in the light of the new geometry, three-dimensional space can equally well be
formed from the plane inward as from the point outward. The one approach is no
more basic than the other. In the old-fashioned explanation, we start from the
point as the entity of no dimension. Moving the point, say from left to right,
we obtain the straight line as the first dimension; moving the line forward and
backward, we get the two dimensions of the plane; finally, moving the plane
upward and downward, the
full three dimensions. To modern geometry this way of thinking is still
valid, but it is only half the truth - one of two polar-opposite aspects, the
interweaving harmony of which is the real essence of spatial structure. In the other
and complementary aspect we should start from the plane and work inward. To
mention only the first step: just as the movement of a point into a second
point evokes the straight line that joins the two, so does the movement of a
plane into a second plane give rise to the straight line in which the two
planes interpenetrate. We can continue moving in the same line and obtain a
whole sheaf of planes, like the leaves of an open book or a door swinging on
its hinges. We thus obtain a 'line of planes,' as in the former instance a
'line of points.' In the space-creating polarity of point and plane, the
straight line plays an intermediate role, equally balanced in either direction.
Just as two points of space always determine the unique straight line which joins
them, so do two planes: we only need to recognize that parallel planes too have
a straight line in common; namely, the infinitely distant line of either. At
last we see that all the intuitively given relationships of points, lines and
planes have this dual or polar aspect. Whatever is true of planes in relation
to lines and points, is equally true of points in relation to lines and planes.
Three points, for example, not in line, determine a single plane (principle of
the tripod), but so do three planes, not in line (the ceiling and two adjoining
walls of a room) determine a single point. The planes must again be extended to
the infinite and thought of as a whole to see that this is true without
exception.
All spatial forms are ultimately made of points, lines, and planes. Even
a plastic surface or a curve in space consists of an infinite and continuous
sequence, not only of points, but of tangent lines and tangent or osculating
planes. The mutual balance of these aspects - pointwise and planar, with the linewise
aspect intermediating - gives us a deeper insight into the essence of
plasticity than the oldfashioned, one-sidedly pointwise treatment.
The outcome is that whatever geometrical form or law we may conceive, there
will always be a sister form, a sister law equally valid, in which the roles of
point and plane are interchanged. Or else the form we thought of - as for
example a tetrahedron with its equal number of points and planes - proves to be
its own sister form, arising ideally out
of itself by the polar interchange of point and plane. The principle
just enunciated, as it were a masterkey among the truths of projective
geometry, is known as 'the principle
of duality.' It would perhaps have been better had it been described as
a 'principle of polarity' from the outset, for in its cosmic aspect it is also
one of the essential keys to
the manifold polarities of nature. The recognition of it leads to a form
of scientific thinking calculated to transcend one-sided atomism and
materialistic bias.
A sphere is placed inside a cube just large enough to contain it.
Touching the six planes of the cube, the sphere picks out six points of
contact. Joined 3 x 3, the latter give eight planes, forming the double pyramid
of the octahedron. Octahedron and cube are sister forms, in polar relation to
one another. The structure and number relations are the same, only with plane
and point - the principles of expansion and contraction - interchanged. The
octahedron has eight planes, each of them bearing a triangle or triad of points
and of the lines that join them; so has the cube eight points, each of them
bearing a triad of planes and lines. The octahedron on the other hand has six
points or apices, each with a four-fold structure, answering to the cube with
its six four-square planes. The number of straight lines or edges is the same
in each; namely, twelve.
The sphere is only one of many spatial forms which evoke the polarity of
plane and point - qualitatively speaking, of expansion and contraction. It does
so not only by actual contact as in Figure 1. For any given plane in space, the
presence of a sphere evokes a point; for any given point, a plane. I cannot
stop to explain the comparatively simple construction by means of which this
happens. The mutual relation is literally one of expansion and contraction.
Here, on the left, we see the positions of cube and octahedron reversed
as compared with Figure 1. The sphere is just large enough to fit inside the
octahedron, touching
the eight planes at the mid points of the triangular faces. The points
of contact obviously mark the eight cornerpoints of a cube, which is now inside
the sphere. In the middle corner-points of a cube, which is now inside
the sphere. In the middle and right-hand pictures the size of the spheres is
left unaltered, while in imagination we have deliberately caused the cube to
contract towards the center. The sphere preserves the mutual relation of cube
and octahedron, only the octahedron
now has to expand. For in the same proportion as the eight points of the
cube recede, inwards from the surface of the sphere toward the center, the
corresponding planes hover outward, causing the octahedron to expand even as
the cube contracts. In the right-hand picture the cube is in linear dimensions
half, the octahedron twice as big as on the left.
We can imagine the same process continued 'to the bitter end.' The
octahedron quickly grows outward into the spatial universe. For when the cube
is a hundred times smaller, the octahedron will be a hundred times bigger than
before. And when at last the cube disappears, its eight corner-points merging
into the single centre, we must imagine the eight planes of the octahedron
coalescing in a single plane - the infinite periphery of space. For the
infinitely distant taken as a whole in all directions - as it were, the
infinite sphere of space - being of infinite radius, is no longer a sphere at
all in the ordinary sense (just as a sphere contracted to a point is no longer
a true sphere); it is a plane. We thus arrive at another of the basic concepts
of the new geometry; namely, the single infinitely distant plane qua infinite
periphery of space. It is the presence of this unique plane which from the indeterminate
and ever mobile forms of pure projective space helps to produce the more
rigidly determined space of the physical world, in other words the space of
Euclid. We need only think of parallelism. Parallel lines and planes are those
that meet at an infinite distance. Now as the crystals in nature and human
works of architecture show, parallelism plays an essential part in all the
laws and measures of the physically spatial world. To the laws of parallelism
must be added those of the right angle and of angular measure generally. These,
too, are determined from the infinite periphery inward. The way in which this
happens would take too long to explain in the present context, but the fact is
evident, for we bear witness to it in every act of mensuration, when we take
our sightings from the most distant points available - to be exact, from
infinitely distant points.
Now my contention is that these ideas - the fundamentally planar and not
only pointwise structure of universal space, and the mutually balanced relation
of contractive and expansive, or centric and peripheral qualities, known to
pure mathematicians for well over a hundred years - should at long last be
taken seriously in our understanding of real nature.
Prof. H.W. Turnbull, editor of Newton's correspondence now in course of
publication. "In the realm of growth and form,": Suggested the same
thing, referring to the pointwise and planewise aspects, "both analyses
are significant. The seed, the stem and the leaf of a plant suggest two ways of
studying the three-dimensional shape, the one pointwise microscopically and the
other planewise." He also draws attention to the fact that the relative
completeness of a pointwise analysis, reached at a certain scientific stage,
neither excludes nor is vitiated by the polar opposite aspect which may still
be awaiting discovery. "
This mathematical duality is not a case of competing theories, where one
is right and the other is wrong ... The characteristic description of their
relationship is that of in and through, but not of for or against." It is
only a deeper and fuller insight which we may expect along these lines. Surely
it is not unreasonable to suppose that nature is built on the same principles
which light up in the mind of man when he exercises one of the noblest of human
faculties - that of clear geometric thinking and imagination.
Let us now turn from the world of pure form to that of active forces.
Here once again, since Newton, Faraday and Clerk Maxwell, clear geometrical and
mathematical thinking has enabled us to master the play of physical forces,
such as the force of gravitation, the momentum of heavy bodies, the electric
and magnetic forces. Primarily, we know of these not by dint of thought alone,
but by experiment and observation. Unlike that of velocities or of
accelerations (some of the textbooks fail to make this clear), the
'parallelogram of forces' cannot be proved by any reasoning or definition; it
is a fact of experience, confirmed as accurately as we like by many kinds of
experiment. But though we only know of them empirically to begin with, nature
reveals that in their interplay and balance the physical forces obey
mathematical laws. When we discover these laws and bring our minds into harmony
with them, we learn to understand and master the play of forces. Hence all the
power of our applied science and technology. Now it is characteristic of nearly
all the forces known to physics that they are point-centered. These are the
kind of forces which emanate from heavy matter; it is only natural that we have
found them first, since physical science took its start from mechanics - from
the investigation of the cruder properties of matter. But this was also due to
the prevailing forms of thought. Man naturally notices what he ants to, and
things escape his notice even if he sees them if the idea that is in them is
foreign to his mind. Through his Euclidean schooling, the spatial thinking of
the scientist has hitherto been one-sidedly centric and pointwise. He has the
mental equipment for understanding centric forces;
no wonder if he finds them.
For the sake of brevity may I now put as a categorical statement what I
certainly do not intend thus dogmatically, for like any other scientific
proposition it is only stated to
be put to the test. The forces of nature, manifesting in the world of
space and time, are not only centric; there are peripheral forces also. Even as
the pure form of space is in the light of modern geometry balanced between
point and plane, so are the forces that prevail in nature; they are not only
pointwise or centric but peripheral or planar.
Moreover, as in the domain of centric forces the central point of the
material planet on which we live, in other words the center of gravity of the
earth, is for us a center of primary importance, so in the realm of the peripheral
or planar forces, what we experience as the infinitely distant plane - in
simple language the vast periphery of the blue sky - is a most important source
of the peripheral forces.
This, I shall now endeavor to explain, is an ideal key to what you are
really doing when you enhance the power of your medicaments by the rhythmic
process of expansion
or dilution. But let me first point out that the idea of peripheral
forces is not altogether new. Under the name of 'ethereal forces' or by other
kindred forms of description they have been known since time immemorial. In the
East, their reality has never ceased to be recognized. Only need to be
re-discovered in terms of modern science. In the Seventeenth Century a more or
less instinctive knowledge of them still lingered on traditionally, but had
grown so confused that the new science, based on experiment and reason, could
make nothing of it. Tradition undoubtedly helped give rise to Huyghens' idea
of a 'luminiferous ether,' but this too was interpreted in terms of physical
and centric forces and was to that extent a misunderstanding, which has in any
case been abandoned by twentieth-century physics. The new geometry on the other
hand, grown to maturity during the Nineteenth Century, gives us the possibility
of understanding the ethereal qua peripheral forces in a strictly scientific
sense. They are forces related above all to the realm of life, just as the
centric forces - gravitational, electro-magnetic and so on - manifest most
strongly in the sphere of inorganic matter. By sensitive and spiritually
developed people, though often called by different names or not named at all,
they can be known from direct experience.
R.S.: to whom I am most indebted in this connection, was always at pains
to integrate with scientific method what is experienced by subtler and more
spiritual modes of cognition. Thus in his medical work Fundamentals of Therapy,
written in conjunction with Dr. Ita Wegman, he described the ethereal formative
forces of the human and other living organisms as in their essence 'peripheral
forces.' He distinguishes between the forces - manifested above all in the
lifeless realm - emanating from material centers, and another kind of force,
working not outward from any earthly center but inward from the periphery,
generally from the surrounding cosmos. In spatial character he describes them
succinctly as 'forces which have not a center but a periphery.' They tend
indeed towards the material bodies of living things - above all towards the
germinating centers
of fresh life - but the relative center towards which they work is not
their source, rather their infinite receiver. We must invert the accustomed
functional notions of center and periphery to get the right idea. A physical
force emanating from a center needs the surrounding space into which to ray
out. The infinite periphery has to be there to receive it. So does an ethereal
or peripheral force need the living center towards which it works. It springs
from the periphery, from the vast expanse, and tends towards the living center
which it endows, just as the physical force springs from a center, from a place
of concentration, and works outward. 8 In lectures to scientists towards the
end of his life, Steiner himself referred to projective geometry as a valuable
pathway along which such ideas could be elaborated.
The ethereal or peripheral forces, in the nature of the case, have more
to do with living growth and development, with the 'becoming' of things. If
there were only rigid and finished forms the old Euclidean geometry might
suffice us. To understand the genesis and metamorphosis of living forms we need
a more mobile thinking, and one that reveals the balance between the centric
and peripheral, architectural and plastic aspects. Yet even the most rigid of
nature's forms, that of the crystal, is understood in a far deeper way (as any
crystallographer with an elementary knowledge of projective geometry may
confirm) when we perceive how the crystal lattice derives from an archetypal
pattern in the infinitely distant plane - the infinite periphery of universal
space. In the realm of living form, once the new geometrical idea has been
awakened in the mind, morphology and embryology confirm what is known to us by
simple everyday experience from the world of plants - how life on earth is
sustained by forces flowing inward from the surrounding heavens. Biology has
hitherto been trying to understand these things with concepts derived from the
inorganic world, where centric forces predominate. As has been said by
Bertalanffy among others, it has in some ways been a hindrance to biological
thinking to have to borrow its basic concepts from the non-biological sciences
of physics and physical chemistry. Ideas no less scientifically exact should be
derivable directly from the study of living phenomena, even as the ideas of
mechanics and electromagnetics have been derived from the study of non-living
things. Far from implying a gulf between the living and the non-living, it
would then be found that the ideas derived from the world of life reveal the
non-living too in a deeper aspect. A corpse is understandable as the remnant of
a once living body. To try to comprehend the living with the science of the
dead is in an almost literal sense to put the cart before the horse.
To open-minded contemplation, nature reveals on every hand the forms and
the signature of active forces, not only centric but peripheral and planar.
Once this is recognized, the enhancement of medicinal virtues by the
potentizing process becomes intelligible. There is a passage in the Organon 10
where Hahnemann distinguishes between the raw state of matter and what becomes
of it "by ever higher dynamization when at long last it is entirely
sublimed (or subtilized) into its spirit-like medicinal virtue ... It is most
probably that in the dynamizing process the matter is in the end entirely
resolved into its individual spirit-like essence - and that in its crude
condition it should in any case be regarded as consisting of this spirit-like
essence in a latent, undeveloped state." (Hahnemann uses the word Wesen,
which I have here translated 'essence'). One is reminded that in former times
the most volatile and fragrant effusions of a living plant were taken to be a
physical manifestation of the ethereal forces and virtues; hence the
traditional names which still survive. In English we call them 'essential
oils,' and the equivalent in German “aetherische Oele”. We come near to
Hahnemann's meaning when we realize that the ethereal, peripheral forces of
life, working in towards the earth from the surrounding heavens, are the means
of bringing into the physical world the purely spiritual essences to which the
specific virtues of living things are due. I think this, too, is the significance
of Hahnemann's often repeated phrase, 'well-nigh spiritual!)
Let us pursue the thought a little further. If crude matter alone were
concerned - if stress were laid on the domain of centric forces, expressed in
material quantity and weight - it would be natural to expect that an effect,
comparatively feeble in a dilute solution, would be enhanced with increasing
concentration. We reduce the volume; in other words, draw in towards the
center. But if the substance is the bearer of ethereal virtues of which the
origin is peripheral, experience will show - and it is equally natural to
expect, once we get used to the idea - that the effect will be enhanced, not by
concentration but by expansion. Admittedly this notion is too simple; for it is
the rhythmic sequence of dilutions and successions or trituration which renders
the potency effective. This too, however, is understandable in terms of centric
and peripheral or physical and ethereal spaces, and our attention is thus drawn
to a principle of great importance which we could scarcely approach at all, but
for these ideas.
May I explain by a familiar comparison from physics. Again and again we
see rhythmic phenomena taking place along and about a line stretched between
two end-points - a violin string, for example, a monochord, even an organ pipe.
Or again, between the poles of a Wimshurst machine - it is well known that the
spark is not a simple but a rhythmically alternating discharge. Tension between
two poles begets a play of forces giving rise to rhythm. But in these purely
physical examples either pole is of point-like centric nature. I believe
science will presently discover a deeper and more primary source of rhythmic
activity - no longer between two point-centers or the two ends of a line, but
between center and periphery, or point and plane, in concentric spheres, of
which there may be many forms. The tension is no longer between two foci of
like kind, competing with one another as in a tug of war, but between entities
polar opposite in nature, physical and ethereal respectively - related to the
polarity of point and plane,
of which the mental picture is evoked in its simplest form by the
geometrical function of a sphere. I would suggest that a polarity of this kind
is latent in every chemical substance, and that there is no physical material
that has not ultimately arisen from the interplay of centric and peripheral
forces - forces of earthly and cosmic origin. The finished substance lying
there in its crude and quiescent state is the ultimate precipitation of an
activity between center and periphery - qualitatively speaking, between earth
and heaven. I think the number-relations of valency and chemical constitution,
also the wonderful rhythms of the spectral lines, will prove to be an
expression of this fact.
The words of the poet, 'Out of the everywhere into here,' apply not only
to the human child but to all living things, and in its ultimate origin to the
very substance of the earth.
Even the simplest facts of science point in this direction, though one
will only see this if one's idea of space derives from the new geometry. Think
of a body radiating light and heat, say a candle-flame, a glowing ember. Purely
as a phenomenon - a fact of everyday experience confirmed by exact experiment
- the radiation expresses itself in concentric spheres about the source. In the
one-sided thought forms of the old geometry and physics, the whole activity is
attributed to the visible, point-centered source of the radiation, with the
surrounding space a mere emptiness into which it spends itself as it falls off
with increasing distance. But in the light of modern geometry the figure of
concentric spheres only has meaning as a mutual relation between center and
infinite periphery. The center is the answering point or 'pole' of the
infinitely distant plane; spheres are concentric if this point is the same for
them all. It is only by virtue of their common relation to the cosmic periphery
that the spheres are concentric. Thus in the simple phenomenon of radiation
nature is bearing witness to the fact that in some way the periphery is an
active partner.
Incidentally, something like this appears to have been known in earlier
times; perhaps it is only waiting to be re-established in a more scientific
form.
I spoke of Newton's relation to the Cambridge Platonists. Another of
Newton's contemporaries who also moved in these circles was Thomas Vaughan,
brother of the better-known poet Henry Vaughan. Like Newton himself, Vaughan
was an alchemist and wrote books not very easy for us today to understand. In
his Lumen de Lumine he tells of a 'spiritual fire-earth', by which he evidently
means something of the quality of a circumference, a cosmic periphery
enveloping the earth. He who attains to the great secret, says Vaughan, will
come to know "how the fire-spirit hath its root in the spiritual
fire-earth and receives from it a secret influx.” Nay, more, he will know
"why all influx of fire descends - against the nature of fire - coming
downwards from heaven ... and why the same fire, having found a body, ascends
again towards heaven and grows upwards." Such paradoxical ideas as are
suggested to us by the clear and cogent thought forms of the new geometry seem
here to be expressed as an immediate outcome of mystical communion with
nature.
Admittedly the thought I have put to you concerning radiation is purely
geometrical to begin with: nature alone can show whether and how it is relevant
to the real play of forces. Yet in the light of your own experiences ladies and
gentlemen, this is precisely the suggestion which I now venture to put forward.
In homeopathic remedies, insofar
as rhythmic potentization plays an essential part in their preparation,
you are already dealing with a realm to which this kind of thought applies. The
substance you are potentizing was originally formed from the cosmic periphery
inward, by an individually rhythmic, not to say musical, relation between the
cosmic periphery and the earthly center. True, it has come to rest in the
earthly place where it abides - in root or leaf of plant, in metal or crystal
mineral, or even in the bottle on the apothecar's shelves. But this is only its
last resting place. In the precise earthly locality where it was first
precipitated, it came into being through a specific and individual relation
between the earth-planet and the vast spheres of the cosmos. In this relation
lies the secret of its chemical individuality qua substance, and of its vital
nature if still embedded in the living realm. The formative rhythm is still
latent in it, and when the careful hand of the pharmacist, guided by experience
and inspired by the will to help, subjects it to the rhythmic process of
expansion, mingling it by trituration or succussion with the spatial medium
which is to receive it, an opportunity is given for the formative rhythm of its
origin to be re-born and for its latent connection with the healing essences of
the cosmos to be restored. One is reminded of the saying of Novalis:
"Every disease is a musical problem and every cure a musical
resolution"... Moreover, is not the picture I have been giving in harmony
with Hahnemann's own words quoted above, when he speaks of the spirit-like
individuality of the substance which in the crude material lies latent and
concealed?
If I am right in the main thesis I have put before you, a new chapter
will be opened out, tending to bring our science nearer to life - to human life
above all. Work in the new direction is progressing, both in its biological
aspects and in its bearing on the facts of chemistry and physics. The concept
of ethereal space as the natural field of action of living, formative forces,
which I have had to put forward all too briefly in this lecture, can be worked
out with all mathematical precision. And as so often happens when an idea is
really fertile, in doing this one finds that one is not alone; that what is
seemingly new has been divined and adumbrated and was implicit in much of the
specific work that has gone before. The seemingly insurmountable division
between an orthodox scientific outlook and realms of human skill and experience
which find no place in the accepted system of the day, is overcome without
injustice to either party when a fresh aspect springs into focus. This I
believe is about to happen, and in it your profession too, ladies and
gentlemen, will find new life and vindication.
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