05.14.08

Hahnemann and Darwin

Posted in Science at 7:14 pm by nemo

The Difference between Hahnemann and Darwin
In contrast to evolutionary biology, homeopathy is a closed, dogmatic system of fixed rules. Moreover, its basic tenet is an irrational tautology that lacks any factual basis.

U. KUTSCHERA

U. Kutschera is at the Institute of Biology, University of Kassel, Heinrich-Plett-Strasse 40, D-34109 Kassel, Germany. He can be reached at kut@uni-kassel.de.

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A “Special Report” published recently in Nature argued that Samuel Hahnemann’s famous Principle of Similars (”let like cure like”), which is based on the treatment of the sick with extremely diluted, vigorously shaken agents (so-called “potencies”), is a pseudoscience (Giles 2007). While that conclusion is true, I fear that this paper, which can be viewed as a sequel to an excellent review article on homeopathy and physics published ten years ago in the Skeptical Inquirer (Park 1997), will not convince all readers of the antiscientific nature of this alternative medicine. However, I think that the following additional arguments should persuade every open-minded person that homeopathy is, in fact, eighteenth-century quackery.

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