Patricio Elicer said:
You seem to imply that homeopathy's curative effects are due to the fact that there is a certain amount of the "active substance" in the dilution. In other words, if we had the certainty that no molecule of the active substance is left, then the dituted solution would have no curative effect?. Is that your contention?
This excellent question never got an answer, so perhaps we should ask it again.
The intriguing thing about all this is that Dr. Mas seems to be almost alone among the homoeopaths in making the slightest assertion that there are or might be remedy particles in the high-potency preparations. Homoeopathy boards are littered with agreement that yes, there are no molecules there, but yes, it works anyway. Then insert latest faddish idea about how this might work, with water memory seemingly abandoned in favour of misunderstandings of "The Ladybird Book of Quantum Physics".
So, if Dr. Mas is going to try to show that there are in fact molecules there, then he doesn't just have us to convince, he has the vast majority of his own colleagues in opposition.
His hints at what he means are so oblique that it's difficult to figure out what he's trying to claim. At first I wondered if he might simply intend to claim that so long as the volume is great enough, then there will indeed be a molecule present. Which is of course true, the only problem with that being the actual volumes you start talking about, and the evident impossibility of anybody actually consuming so much.
Then he started wittering on about probability theory, which of course is very much in evidence when discussing homoeopathy and is not ignored at all, and I began to wonder if he was going to point out that the probability that any remedy bottle contains one molecule of the remedy is not zero. Which is true. However, it's very difficult to see where this argument can get him. If you actually had the luck to pick up the bottle with the remedy, then all the other bottles on the shelf have no molecules. So, how come
all the bottles are supposed to work? Ah, but then the probability that
each bottle has a molecule is greater than zero.
All right, but then what is the probability that in a box of 100 bottles, every bottle had a molecule? Again, greater than zero. You can of course go on like this all night. However, it's pointless. Either he is postulating some natural mechanism where the aliquot of material which is thrown away during the potentisation somehow has no molecules, retaining all (or most of) the molecules in the part that becomes the remedy, or he has to concede that the vast and overwhelming majority of bottles of remedy have no molecules in them. Now, wouldn't the first suggestion be as paranormal as anything else we've discussed?
Hmmm, maybe this theory simply says that it's not the actual molecule that has the therapeutic effect, it's the mathematical probability carried by every bottle that it
might contain a molecule. (Why am I even typing this? Mainly because I'm beginning to think that there's no idea so outlandish that Dr. Mas might not entertain it. I'd be interested to see the exposition if this is in fact the line he intends to take.)
But no, he now seems to be saying quite explicitly that the molecules of the remedy are subdivided during the potentisation.
WTF???
You know, this was one lunacy that we even managed to talk Kumar out of fairly early on. He even posted at H'pathy saying that since it was clearly impossible to subdivide molecules that way, some other mechanism had to be looked for.
Now, I wouldn't entirely exclude the possibilty of some macromolecules breaking down in the plant-based remedies. Or that one involving some angry honey bees drowned in some unspeakable tincture and marinated for some time. Nucleic acids and large proteins will degenerate and probably disintegrate to some extent. But other smaller molecules will never break down because the bonds involved would simply require too much energy to break.
In fact, this angle is merely one of the wrinkles involved when considering those plant (and animal) based remedies. The mother tincture is a mash of all sorts of different chemicals, and which ones are you actually talking about when you start calculating dilution factors? And what sort of concentration is the mother tincture in the first place? Actually, mother tincture concentration is probably lower than what is usually assumed in the calculations, so if anything works against the claims. And even if we're talking about something with a lot of macromolecules in it which might break down, this only shifts the ultramolar dilution a place or two - certainly takes it nowhere near 30C.
To make it simpler we should, as anor277 suggested, consider (and require Dr. Mas to consider) an inorganic remedy such as salt (or gold as per Geni's suggestion). This highlights the fact that in order still to have remedy substance present in all bottles of 30C, we're not talking about fragmenting some proteins into polypeptides, or even breaking up a stable molecule into its component atoms, we're talking about splitting atoms.
Has this genius of the modern age really come to this forum to tell us that homoeopathy works because all the shaking and diluting splits the atom? Even Kumar was dissuaded from that idea months if not a year ago.
Surely when he came here he thought he had something to say which wasn't easy to dismiss, and which would support his case? I've done my damndest to try to figure out what it is, but that's all I can come up with. It makes a change from water memory or "it's quantum, man", but there's a reason why water memory and quantum theory have been the darlings of homoeopathy since long. Because these other ideas are obviously nonsensical even to a homoeopath with the odd stray neurone in his cranium.
What do they give them PhDs for in India?
Rolfe.
