Towards a Biosemiotic Understanding of Potentization

Summary

In this paper I demonstrate some of the ways in which semiotic biology enlivens questions surrounding homeopathy that have remained dormant within the biochemical framework. In the first section, I outline the process of potentization involved in preparing homeopathic remedies and explain its impossibility within the biophysical paradigm. I then distinguish potentization from dilution in light of the speculation, introduced by Samuel Hahnemann, that the succussion or “intimate mixing” of a solution awakens the dynamic power of natural substances. In the second section, I present the distinction maintained by biosemioticians between biology and chemistry and its inextricability from our understanding of open-ended evolvability and life as we know it. After outlining the rationale for studying living processes in terms of semiotics, I demonstrate the commensurability of this mode of inquiry with the study of potentization. In the third and final section, I provide an overview of the pivotal research conducted by Jacques Benveniste, focusing on the ways in which it brings the study of homeopathy into the discourse of biosemiotics. I then consider some of the implications raised by Benveniste's experiments, and present the many questions that his research raises as a concrete indication of the suitability of biosemiotics as a method for studying the otherwise mysterious mechanism of homeopathy.

Key words

Biosemiotics - Potentization - Codes - Water memory - Benveniste - Homeopathy - Potentization - Succussion

1 Kalevi Kull, “A Brief History of Biosemiotics,” in Biosemiotics; Information, Codes, and Signs in Living Systems, ed. Marcello (New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 2007), 2.

2 H. H. Pattee, “The Necessity of Biosemiotics: Matter-Symbol Complementarity” in Introduction to Biosemiotics; the New Biological Synthesis (Springer Netherlands, 2007), 116.

3 Bill Gray, Homeopathy; Science or Myth? (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2000), 57.

4 Marcello Barbieri, “Life is Artifact Making,” in Biosemiotics; Information, Codes, and Signs in Living Systems, ed. Marcello Barbieri (New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 2007), 84–85.

5 Winfried Noth, “Semiotics for Biologists,” in Biosemiotics; Information, Codes, and Signs in Living Systems, ed. Marcello Barbieri (New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 2007), 143.

6 Barbieri, Life is Artifact Making, 87.

7 Noth, Science for Biologists, 142.

8 Ibid., 57.

9 Harris Coulter, Homeopathic Medicine (St. Louis: Formur, Inc. Publishers 1975), 35.

10 Edward Whitmont, Psyche and Substance (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1991), 6–7.

11 Ibid., 6.

12 Edward Whitmont, The Alchemy of Healing; Psyche and Soma (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1993), 6.

13 Ibid., 6–7.

14 Samuel Hahnemann, Lesser Writings, ed. and trans. R. E. Dudgeon (New Delhi: B. Jain Publishers Ltd., 2006), 114.

15 Ibid., 115.

16 Stanley, Salthe, “What is the Scope of Biosemiotics? Information in Living Systems,” in Introduction to Biosemiotics; The New Biological Synthesis (Springer Netherlands, 2007), 135.

17 Ibid., 135.

18 Ibid., 135.

19 Pattee, The Necessity of Biosemiotics, 116.

20 Ibid., 116.

21 “We may ask whether, in view of the fact that what characterizes biology most deeply is the presence of molecular level information held in the genetic system, would it not be reasonable to suppose that biology is fundamentally nothing more than the ramified consequences of a highly specified kind of chemistry? Unless we subscribe rigorously to a bottom-up ideology, biology's range (reach or footprint) over so many scalar levels would seem to argue against this. Only if all of biology could be completely explained as the direct result of effects generated by proteins could it reasonably be taken to be just an elaboration of chemistry” (Salthe, What is the Scope of Biosemiotics?, 134).

22 Pattee, The Necessity of Biosemiotics, 118.

23 Kull, A Brief History of Biosemiotics, 2.

24 Pattee, The Necessity of Biosemiotics, 118.

25 Salthe, What is the Scope of Biosemiotics?, 134.

26 Pattee, The Necessity of Biosemiotics, 119.

27 Kull, A Brief History of Biosemiotics, 3.

28 Jesper Hoffmeyer and Claus Emmeche, “Code Duality and the Semiotics of Nature,” in Biosemiotics; Information, Codes, and Signs in Living Systems, ed. Marcello Barbieri (New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 2007), 33.

29 Yolene Thomas, “The History of the Memory of Water,” in Homeopathy 96, 3 (July 2007): p. 152.

30 Ibid., 152.

31 Ibid., 152.

32 Ibid., 153.

33 At first glance, the possibility that the succussion of homeopathic remedies enables not only the transmission of information, but also the emergence of a regulatory structure is lost in Benveniste's interpretation of potentization. But, as noted above, this possibility is essential to the study of biosemiotics. And so it necessarily remains open, if not in Benveniste's interpretation, in the framework within which his experiments are conducted.

34 Ibid., 153–155.

35 Ibid., 155.

36 Ibid., 155.