But can’t homeopathy be represented as positing an additional chemical law- the presence of some spiritual energy signature which water can carry? I’m not exactly familiar with homeopathy but it seems like you could come up with a really kludgey theory that lets it work without you actually having to get rid of theories of chemical bonding, valence electrons and so on. It doesn’t seem as easy to do that with the disk earth scenario.
It’s worse than that. Water having a memory, spiritual or otherwise, of things it used to carry, would be downright simple compared to what homeopathy posits. Considering everything all the water on Earth has been through, you’d expect it to be full of memories of all sorts of stuff; not just the last homeopathic remedy you put in it. What homeopathy requires is that water has a memory of things that it has held, which has to be primed by a specific procedure, namely thumping the container of water against a leather pad stuffed with horse hair while the solute is still in it so the water will remember it. The process is called “succussion” and the inventor of homeopathy thought that it made his remedies stronger. Later advocates though, realized the implications of the “water has a memory” hypothesis, and so rationalized it as necessary.
But essentially whatever kludge you come up with would still have to have biochemical consequences or it wouldn’t be able to work at all. (Or you make the kludge super extra complex, which then, again, crushes the probability). And once you have those effects, you need an excuse for why those effects don’t show up elsewhere in chemistry, why we don’t see such things otherwise.
But can’t homeopathy be represented as positing an additional chemical law- the presence of some spiritual energy signature which water can carry? I’m not exactly familiar with homeopathy but it seems like you could come up with a really kludgey theory that lets it work without you actually having to get rid of theories of chemical bonding, valence electrons and so on. It doesn’t seem as easy to do that with the disk earth scenario.
It’s worse than that. Water having a memory, spiritual or otherwise, of things it used to carry, would be downright simple compared to what homeopathy posits. Considering everything all the water on Earth has been through, you’d expect it to be full of memories of all sorts of stuff; not just the last homeopathic remedy you put in it. What homeopathy requires is that water has a memory of things that it has held, which has to be primed by a specific procedure, namely thumping the container of water against a leather pad stuffed with horse hair while the solute is still in it so the water will remember it. The process is called “succussion” and the inventor of homeopathy thought that it made his remedies stronger. Later advocates though, realized the implications of the “water has a memory” hypothesis, and so rationalized it as necessary.
Wow. I hadn’t even heard of the very specific leather pad thing. (I’ve heard it has to be shaken in specific ways, but not that)
How is it that no matter how stupid I think it is, I keep hearing things that makes homeopathy even more stupid than I previously thought?
What Desertopa said.
But essentially whatever kludge you come up with would still have to have biochemical consequences or it wouldn’t be able to work at all. (Or you make the kludge super extra complex, which then, again, crushes the probability). And once you have those effects, you need an excuse for why those effects don’t show up elsewhere in chemistry, why we don’t see such things otherwise.