Magic of signs: a non-local interpretation of … AND DEBATE Magic of signs: a non-local interpretation of homeopathy{H Walach1* 1University Hospital Freiburg, Department of Environmental

EDUCATION AND DEBATE

Magic of signs: a non-local interpretation ofhomeopathy{

H Walach1*

1University Hospital Freiburg, Department of Environmental Medicine and Hospital Hygiene, Freiburg, Germany

Among homeopaths the common idea about a working hypothesis for homeopathiceffects seems to be that, during the potentization process, ìnformation' or ènergy' isbeing preserved or even enhanced in homeopathic remedies. The organism is said to beable to pick up this information, which in turn will stimulate the organism into a self-healing response. According to this view the decisive element of homeopathic therapy isthe remedy which locally contains and conveys this information. I question this view forempirical and theoretical reasons. Empirical research has shown a repetitive pattern, infundamental and clinical research alike: there are many anomalies in high-dilutionresearch and clinical homeopathic trials which will set any observing researcher think-ing. But no single paradigm has proved stable enough in order to produce repeatableresults independent of the researcher. I conclude that the database is too weak andcontradictory to substantiate a local interpretation of homeopathy, in which the remedyis endowed with causal-informational content irrespective of the circumstances. Ipropose a non-local interpretation to understand the anomalies along the lines ofJung's notion of synchronicity and make some predictions following this analysis.British Homeopathic Journal (2000) 89, 127±140.

Keywords: homeopathy; model; causality; synchronicity

Introduction

`When the Baal-shem had to deliver somethingdif®cult, some occult work to help the creatures,he went to a speci®c place in the woods, kindled a®re and, in deep mystical meditation, saidprayers Ð and everything happened as he haddesigned. When, a generation later, the Maggidof Meseritz had to do the same, he went to thesame place in the woods, and said: `Fire wecannot kindle anymore, but the prayers we cansay.' Ð and everything happened according to hiswill. Again a generation later, the Rabbi MosheLeib of Sassow was to do the same work. He alsowent into the woods and said: `We cannot kindle

the ®re, and we do not know the secret medita-tions anymore, which animate the prayers; but weknow the place in the woods, where all thisbelongs to, and this has to suf®ce.' Ð And itwas enough. When, however, another generationlater Rabbi Israel of Rishin had to operate thiswork, he sat down on his golden chair in hiscastle and said: `We cannot kindle a ®re, wecannot say prayers, and we do not know theplace anymore, but we can tell the story aboutit.' And Ð said the person who related thisstory Ð his narration had the same effect as theacts of the other three.'*

With this story the eminent scholar of Jewishmysticism Gershom Scholem ends his work `TheJewish mysticism'.1 It describes the fading ofthe Chassidic tradition and introduces the imageof dilution, in this case the dilution of magic rituals:although the original ritual is diluted and only thestory of it remains, it is effective. The same is true forhomeopathy, as those believe who have their ownexperience. Although the original substance is diluted,

*Correspondence: H Walach, University Hospital Freiburg,Department of Environmental Medicine and Hospital Hygiene,Hugstetterstrasse 55, D-79106 Freiburg, Germany.{ This paper was presented ®rst as an invited lecture to theFourth European Biennial Meeting of the Society for Scienti®cExploration in Valencia in October 1998. A previous version ofthis paper was published as `Magic of signs: A nonlocalinterpretation of homeopathy' in JSci Res 1999, 13: 291 ± 315.Received 14 December 1998; revised 26 October 1999; accepted6 March 2000 *All translations from German or Latin in this text are my own.

British Homeopathic Journal (2000) 89, 127±140ß 2000 Macmillan Publishers Ltd All rights reserved 0007±0785/00 $15.00

www.nature.com/bhj

it is still in some way `present' and effective. Thispresence, I will contend in this paper, is a magical, nota causal presence, like the one described in the text byScholem. Magical presence and effects are wroughtby signs, not by causes. In this sense, homeopathy iseffective in a non-local way: it acts by magicallyactivating connectedness. It uses a system of signs tobring about this action. I propose to use Jung's modelof synchronicity, or, in more general terms, a generalmodel of acausal effects, in order to understand thisaction. I will turn to explain how the scienti®callyobscene word `magic' can be understood in an inof-fensive way. Then Jung's concept of synchronicitywill be elucidated and set into a wider frame of apossible general class of acausal effects. At lasthomeopathy will be exempli®ed as one pheno-menon falling under this category. Before I set out, Iwill make plausible why such an approach is calledfor by interpreting the empirical database for homeo-pathy. I will use some concepts at the beginningloosely and clarify them in due course.

Inadequacy of causal and localinterpretations of homeopathy

The empirical database

It has become fashionable among homeopaths to leanback and proudly pronounce homeopathy as empiri-cally proven. While this may be true for optimists whoare convinced of the ef®cacy of homeopathy by theirexperience anyway, it is certainly not true for thescienti®c community at large. Although the review ofKleijnen and colleagues,2 the meta-analysis of Lindeet al,3 or the series of conceptual replications includ-ing a meta-analysis of Reilly4 ± 6 make a strong casefor homeopathy, one should observe the followingcaveats:

1. Although Linde's et al meta-analysis showed asigni®cant odds ratio for all placebo-controlledclinical trials of 2.45, this odds ratio drops to 1.66(CI 1.33 ± 2.08) for the 26 studies which wereconsidered methodologically good. If one wouldinclude recently published studies which showedclear negative results,7 ± 11 and use only thosewhich study classical homeopathy and with ade-quate methodology the odds ratio would drop toinsigni®cance.12,13 In that sense, the 1997 meta-analysis is a provisional result, not a de®nitiveone. A recent re-analysis of the methodologicallyconvincing studies which studied classicalhomeopathy (leaving out David Reilly's studieswhich studied, strictly speaking, isopathy) cameto the conclusion that classical homeopathy is infact placebo.14

2. There is little evidence for the ef®cacy ofhomeopathy from independent replications.While there are the conceptual replications ofthe ef®cacy of isopathic preparation in atopic

conditions,4 ± 6 these studies have not been repli-cated so far by independent groups. They mightprove to be a non-classical experimenter effect,which is well known in parapsychologicalresearch.15,16 The only evidence for signi®cantand stable effects is a series of studies of aformula of homeopathic preparation in postopera-tive ileus,17 which, however, is not very repre-sentative of the clinical use of homeopathy. Theresearch on ef®cacy of homeopathy in childhooddiarrhoea18,19 has been replicated in a third studynow.20 Although this result is positive, too, theanalysis was not conducted according to theoriginal protocol, and the time course of theimprovement is different.

3. Promising clinical models of homeopathicef®cacy generally have failed, when probedfor independent replicability. While a ®rst seriesof studies of classical homeopathy in rheumatoidarthritis were promising,21,22 a conceptual repli-cation failed.23 While the ®rst trial of homeopathyin migraine, a condition said to be well amenableto homeopathic therapy, was strongly posi-tive,24,25 a direct replication8 and two conceptualreplications failed to substantiate the claims madeby the Italian group.7,26

4. Fundamental research has not been able to comeup with a simple, replicable model so far.Although, taken together, there seems to besome evidence for the claim that ultra-high dilu-tions can be active,27 single models have not beenable to stand up to independent scrutiny. Ben-veniste's model of immune reaction, originallypromising,28,29 could not be replicated.30,31

Although one could argue with a multitude ofsingle research paradigms which in the hands ofsingle researchers have been produced impressiveresults, as witnessed by reports made at variousmeetings of the International Research Groupon Very Low Doses (GIRI), there is no singleparadigm as yet which could be replicatedby researchers critical of homeopathy.32 Theresearch by van Wijk and Wiegant is a beautifulexample of how there is possibly a biologicalfoundation to the similia principle in that theycould show that low doses of toxic agents inducerepair and protection mechanisms in cells, butas yet there are no results with ultra-moleculardoses.33,34

Since homeopathy poses a challenge to themainstream biomolecular paradigm whichequates effects with the action of molecules, itis reasonable to demand independent replicationsin order to substantiate the view that homeopathiceffects are indeed local and causal. There is onepossible exception:35 the recent abstract presenta-tion of work still in progress by Sainte Laudy andcolleagues.36 In this research model, a somewhatdifferent model from that of Benveniste's group

Magic of signsH Walach

128

British Homeopathic Journal

is being used, and the inhibitory effect of poten-tized histamine is studied. So far, in four differentlaboratories experiments have been carried out,and while controls showed a degranulation of48.8%, experimental observations were of41.8%, a difference of clear signi®cance(P< 0.0001). However, only 3 of the labs pro-duced independently signi®cant effects, and itremains to be seen whether the results willremain reproducible.

5. Within homeopathy itself there have been atleast one, probably more, ®eld experimentsongoing over the times. Causticum, a remedyintroduced by Hahnemann, has rarely, if ever,been manufactured according to the originalpharmacopoetic instructions given by Hahne-mann (JoÈrg Wichmann, personal communica-tion). Yet Hahnemann's symptoms seem to bevalid for Causticum produced according todifferent rules. The same is probably true forother remedies like Petroleum or Carcinosinum.This makes it unlikely that the effects of thehomeopathic remedies are locally tied to themedicinal products of homeopathy. Rather theyseem to depend on the homeopathic therapeuticritual as a whole.

6. The pillar of homeopathy, remedy provingsor pathogenetic trials,37 rests on shaky ground.The provings conducted and published since 1945are not very convincing from a scienti®c pointof view,38 the ones conducted in the UnitedKingdom being methodologically slightly morerigorous but not very convincing either.39 Theprovings which I have conducted myself 40 ± 43

do not show a clear pattern of different ormore symptoms with homeopathic substancethan placebo. Modern homeopathic provers likeJeremy Sherr or David Riley admit in personaldiscussions that very speci®c symptoms canbe observed with placebo. These are rarelypublished, however. It seems to be an opensecret that true homeopathic symptoms, meaningspeci®c clearcut symptoms known to belong tothe remedy, can also be observed with placebo,albeit normally only in the context of a homeo-pathic remedy proving.

Taken together, the data poses a double challenge toan open-minded observer: it shows too many irregu-larities which cannot easily be dismissed as chanceresults. Deviations and effects sizes are too large.Hence some type of anomaly seems to be clearlypresent. But the irregularities are striking. They arenot persistent enough to be taken as local, stable orcausal effects.

Causal and local interpretations of homeopathy and

some clari®cations of notions

With the rise of the molecular paradigm it has becomecompulsory for homeopathy to provide a rationale for

its purported effects. Within German homeopathy thishas led to a split between critical, rationalist homeo-paths and followers of `classical' homeopathy.44 ± 48

High potencies were considered unscienti®c, becauseno theoretical rationale for their ef®cacy could beprovided, while the Arndt ± Schulz law, which statedthat small doses could have stimulating effects, gavejusti®cation for the application of low potencies.Homeopathy had unwittingly drifted towards thecausal-local paradigm which is at the base of themodern scienti®c enterprise. Aristotle introducedfour categories of cause: material cause, formalcause, ®nal cause and ef®cient cause. Modern sciencehas dropped all but ef®cient cause from its explana-tory armarment. When we now talk of causal explana-tion, we normally mean ef®cient causes, causes formovement in Aristotle's terminology. In order forsomething to be an ef®cient cause, it has to ful®llthree criteria, according to Hume's analysis, which isstill unchallenged:49

� It has to temporarily precede its effect.� It has to be spatially contiguous.� Cause and effect have to be related in a lawful or

regular way.

Hume noted that `cause' is not something material,but something which has subsistence only in ideas. Itis an abstraction. In our modern view, the notion ofcausality is usually tied to the concept of locality.Locality means that only those regions of our universecan be in causal connection with each other, which arewithin the temporal or spatial reach of a light signal totravel from one place to another. Locality describes`the condition that two events at spatially separatedlocations are entirely independent of each other,provided that the time interval between the events isless than that required for a light signal to travel fromone location to the other'.50 In order for two events tobe causally connected, then, there has to be a materialsignal or connection, which conveys effects and con-nects the cause with its effect.

It is this situation which places homeopathy in adif®cult position. Since there is no conceivablemechanism in the molecular paradigm Ð no mole-cules present in high potencies Ð homeopathic effectscan claim no conceivable cause. It has been claimed,therefore, that the mechanism for homeopathic actionis not molecular, but causal and local nevertheless.

Difference in isotope ratio of the solvent dependingon the solute,51 electromagnetic information,52 clusterformation in the solvent53,54 are the more prominentcandidates of local-causal models which try to estab-lish a connecting causal link between the homeopathicremedy and the organism. A good review can befound in Schulte.55 And even if the possible link issaid to be of informational content56 or a systemicmemory effect,57 the implication is that eventuallythere be some sort of physical substrate, which in itstheoretical content is thought to be a locally causal


129


process. A direct implication is that it is the remedyitself which contains somehow this information orcausal agent.

It is worth our while to note three points of interesthere:

1. Hahnemann himself clearly held a nonphysicaltheory of the action of remedies, in that he wroteof the `spiritlike' nature and action of remedies.He clearly wanted to abstract from the materialpresence of substances and point to the nonma-terial essence of the remedy. I do not think thatreverting back to Hahnemann's original notionwould do our understanding any good, let alonethe scienti®c reputation of homeopathy. But it isinteresting to ®nd the father of homeopathy withthese words.

2. Ef®cient local causality, as we generally assume,is not the only way to view causality. WilliamOckham in the 14th century had already seen thatcausality is something like a theorem or axiomwhich we use, in order to make scienti®c state-ments, but which does not say anything about the`being', the material connection between events.It describes regularities, strong correlations,which cannot be traced back to anything deeper,without reverting to abstract entities. Ockham'sconception of causality, as formulated in hisCommentary on the Physics of Aristotle is:

We have to presuppose one proposition, whichseems to be evident: something is a cause of anything, if, the cause not present but everything elsebeing present, the thing is not, when present, itis. Ð

. . . sumpta una propositione quae videtur mani-festa, quae est ista ìllud est causa alicuius rei,quo non posito omni alio posito, res non est, etquo posito, res est'. Si enim negetur ista propo-sitio videtur perire omnis via ad sciendum aliquidesse causam alteris.58 p. 629f

Against the then fashionable notion of causality asalways involving an entity, Ockham formulatesa purely correlative notion of causality whichalso allows action at a distance, a very modernconcept.59

The problem of causality has been hotlydebated through the ages. Our notion of ef®cient,local causality is by no means the only rationalapproach. It has become so pervasive, though, toequate causality with ef®cient causality and topresuppose locality and connectedness via mate-rial signals that in what follows I will adopt thislanguage. I will refer to causality wheneveref®cient causality is meant. I will refer to acaus-ality when other forms of regularity are intended.

3. Hume, 400 years after Ockham, took the samestance. He was well aware that causality is some-thing which happens in our mind. Our mind

abstracts from regularities and poses causality.We never observe causality, but regularity. This®nds its expression in the fact that the carriers ofthe four fundamental forces are virtual particleswhich are supposed to interact with other parti-cles in order to convey information and mediateforces. We are somehow locked into this world-view that we are not able to understand regularityor causality without conceiving of real or virtualparticles and the corresponding physical theory.

Although newer approaches like classical systemstheory, dynamic systems theory, autopoiesis theory,or chaos theory seem to have remedied the situationsomewhat by posing networks of in¯uence instead ofcauses,60 ± 67 non-linear jumps instead of linear rela-tionships, importance of in®nitely small changes ininitial conditions, and therefore have some appealfor homeopathic researchers,57 these approaches arenevertheless local. That is to say, they all presupposesome sort of material or direct connection, and there-fore fall under the same verdict. Thus systems theoryin any version does not really help (as Martien Brandssuggests in his commentary, this issue pages 141 ±145), but only obscures the principal problem. Apartfrom this, in a recent test of dynamic systems theoryin a paradigm of extrasensory perception, predictionsof a dynamic systems approach could not be veri®ed,although the study showed a signi®cant overall effectof extra sensory perception.68

In what follows I will try to outline a non-localmodel of homeopathy. One might call it an acausalmodel, according to the modern, restrictive view ofcausality, or a correlative causal model, according toa broader perspective, or a formal-causal model inAristotelian terminology. For clarity's sake I will callit non-local and acausal, in order to delineate it fromlocal and causal models.

Magic

Magic is a common human experience through theages. Even now it is a common feature of folkmedicine.69 ± 71 It seems to be tied to a speci®c stateor level of consciousness. The German ± Swiss philo-sopher of culture, Jean Gebser,72 has provided a usefulframework for understanding magic, not as a fakeritual for peoples who have not yet reached ourcultural level, but as a common stage within a generaldevelopment of consciousness. In Gebser's view,magic consciousness is a consciousness which stillhas access to the general connectedness of all beings,which is at the base of life. It was common in earlierdevelopmental phases and is a transient phase in childdevelopment. Some aboriginal and native peoples stilllive mainly within this stage of consciousness, andsome individuals seem to be able to activate this levelof consciousness at will. Tart, knowing about different


130


states of consciousness, has called for a state-depen-dent description of reality and science.73,74

In the magic phase, action is possible via thegeneral connectedness of beings. By attacking animage of a prey the real hunt is more likely to besuccessful. Image and reality are in some ways inter-changeable. The image itself does not seem to beeffective in itself, but the reality of connectednesswhich is evoked. Moerman 75 describes an example ofa Navajo healing ritual. In it, a decoction of healingplants is brewed, all of which are pharmaceuticallyactive in our understanding. But whereas a modernherbal doctor would probably make the sufferer drinkthe tea and the relatives attend to his sickbed, in theNavajo ritual the decoction is spersed over the wholefamily or tribe, and whoever is connected with thesufferer. This is a wonderful illustration of the differ-ent emphasis which is placed on connectedness withina clan or tribe in a different culture. In ethnographicdocuments many different phenomena of this magicaltype of consciousness are reported, from telepathicrelatedness in the dream-time of the aborigines, tospecial ways of healing or fortune telling. While someof those phenomena are clearly faked,76 others seemto be well documented.77 ± 81

While interconnectedness of all beings surely is thecommon ground for the effectiveness of magicalconsciousness, it has always been acknowledged bythinkers in the West to be the basis for understandingthe world at large. Leibniz has contended that in orderto understand consciousness and the mind ± bodyproblem one has to presuppose a universal connected-ness of all beings through time and space, which hecalled pre-established harmony.82

Schopenhauer, who was the source for writers suchas C.G. Jung and Wolfgang Pauli alike, explicitlymentions in his Èssay on Seeing Spirits', what hecalls `nexus of all beings' as being the basis formagical action:83

Moreover . . . animal magnetism [ie mesmerism;author] . . . has testi®ed to an immediate action ofthe will on others and over distances: However,this is exactly the general character of what isknown by the illreputed name of magic. For thisis an unmediated effect of our will which isliberated from causal preconditions of physicalaction, from contiguity as it were; . . . animalmagnetism, sympathetic cures, magic, secondsight, precognitive dreams, apparitions andvisions of all kinds are related phenomena,twigs of the same tree. And they point securelyand irrevocably to a Nexus of all Beings, which isfounded on a totally different order of things thannature, which has at its base the laws of space,time, and causality; . . . such that changes arewrought by totally different ways than those ofthe causal chain and its successive links.

Note that Schopenhauer explicitly posits magicagainst causal action: magic is free from the con-

straints of time and space and it works immediately,without mediating causes. In our terminology adoptedso far, magic is an acausal, nonlocal action in Scho-penhauer's view.

According to Gebser, the magical phase is followedby mythical consciousness. The hallmark of mythicalconsciousness is the rise of consciousness as imagi-native, psychical, as it were. Mythical consciousnessis emotional consciousness. It is heralded by the initialphrase of Homer's Iliad: `The rage, sing, O Goddess.'The Greek word `menis', meaning `rage', has thesame root as the Latin `mens' and our modern word`mind'. While `menis' is emotional mind, so to speak,mythically conscious mind of the ancient hero, ourmind is abstract. Nevertheless, both words have thesame root and thus point to a common notion. Theancient Greek myths Ð and probably other myths aswell Ð tell the tale of the struggle of consciousness, inthe image of the hero's journey, against the powers ofnature which want to devour the hero or hold himback.84 The mythical mind has to overcome hisemotions Ð as a youth in puberty Ð in order tobecome modern analytical mind.

In Gebser's model the mythical phase of conscious-ness is followed by the mental phase, which is thepredominant mode of consciousness in modernWestern cultures. It's signature is perspective, whichin painting was discovered in the Renaissance.85

Perspective opens up a space and creates the illusionof distance. And in this distance the observer experi-ences himself as separate from the object. Perspectiveis the re¯ex of a consciousness of subject and objectas distinct entities. It is an expression of mentalconsciousness. It is three-dimensional space whichallows for the laws of mechanics to be formulated.And incidentally it was Newton, who postulated anabsolute space Ð against Leibniz who argued for therelativity of space86 Ð and thereby laid the founda-tions of a mechanics of ef®cient causes, which restrictscienti®c thinking, if they are taken as absolute.Mental consciousness is analytic consciousness. Itoperates in the framework of cause and effect, oforder and measure. It has achieved great progress, hasprovided us with freedom from the immediate grip ofnature, has given us a notion of human value andgeneral human rights. It has accomplished unprece-dented technological progress, which opens up anabundancy of possibilities. The de®cient side, asGebser calls it, is a loss of nature and a disconnectionfrom the roots of mutual connectedness.

In Gebser's model the mental phase is to befollowed by a phase of integral consciousness,which he sees as emerging. Its hallmark is aperspec-tivity, as he calls it. This can be seen in art, which hasbecome increasingly aperspectival or multiperspecti-val. It is obvious in quantum mechanics which by theprinciple of complementarity forces scientists to thinkin a dual way in order to understand physical pheno-mena. It is equally obvious in the n-dimensionality of


131


Hilbert spaces. I do not want to speculate on this stageof consciousness, since Gebser saw it as emerging andonly slowly taking form such that one would have towait for its de®nite shape to grow. One of thepurported bene®ts of this phase would be that earlierstages of consciousness would be equally accessiblewithout mental consciousness losing its achievements.

For the purpose of this paper it is enough to see thatmagic can be seen as a stage in the development ofconsciousness which draws on different presupposi-tions, and that the modern scienti®c stance can berelativistically seen as a mentalist concept, which isnot necessarily complete and not necessarily unique.The precondition for magical consciousness to beoperative is the activation of connectedness. This,however, does not mean regression to earlier stagesof development, which is usually connotated with theword `magic'. It could be a hallmark of integralconsciousness to be able to keep the achievementsof mental consciousness while being able at times toactivate magical connectedness. We therefore shouldturn to connectedness and elucidate this concept.

Connectedness

Whitehead

The development of modern thinking can be viewedas an explication of atomist thinking, emphasizingindividuals or external relations, against internalrelations or connectedness.87 Alfred North Whiteheadwas one of the few modern thinkers who tried tounderstand individuals Ð actual entities or actualoccasions Ð in terms of their connectedness ornexus with other occasions.88 He emphasized thenoteworthy fact that individual actual entities, atomsof being as it were, arise out of connectedness,integrating many different in¯uences into their dis-tinct existence, and radiating out in¯uences, therebygiving rise to new entities. The ®nal reality in thisview is the connectedness of single entities, or indi-vidual entities creating a network of mutual in¯uenceor nexus. Individuality arises out of connectedness,connectedness gives rise to individuality. One withoutthe other is not a rationally conceivable notion. Hencereality is in some sense non-local.

Quantum entanglement

While Whitehead's philosophical concept of the uni-verse relies on its theoretically convincing power,which in turn is dependent on one's implicit ontology,quantum mechanics (QM) as a fundamental theory ofmatter has settled some metaphysical questions byexperiment, an important fact which has not beengiven due credit.89 In the formalism of QM, twoparts of a single quantum system remain entangledno matter how distant in space and time they are. If ameasurement is made of one part of the system, the

other part is known in its corresponding state as well.This fact is known as Einstein ± Podolsky ± Rosen(EPR) entanglement, according to a paper of theseauthors, in which they tried to show that QM cannotbe complete. The state of affairs remained undecideduntil in 1964 John Bell90 showed a way out. He wrotedown the preconditions for two parts of a system to beindependent in his famous inequality. It is in factbased on a simple thought and describes the bound-aries of correlated observations which can be obtainedunder the preconditions of independence of anysystem.91 This inequality, however, made it possibleto test the predictions of QM experimentally, one ofthe most famous experiments being those of AlainAspect and colleagues.92,93 Bell's inequality is vio-lated by QM, as has been experimentally ascertainedbeyond reasonable doubt, and thus the predictednonlocal entanglement of parts of a quantum systemhave to be accepted, unless one wants to subscribe to apositivist view and give up realism, which is normallydeemed not an acceptable alternative.94 ± 98

It is generally accepted that entanglement or non-local or EPR correlatedness is a fundamental fact ofnature. It is normally only detectable by intricateexperimentation and predicted by theory only forquantum systems. Therefore, one normally assumesthat EPR correlations are of not much interest foreveryday life. Some physicists point out that we donot know whether the fundamental entanglement ofnature is completely broken up and what the boundaryconditions are,89,99,100 others voice the opinion thatEPR correlations might have played a major roleduring the evolution and thus could have an impor-tance even for macroscopic systems.101 It should benoted that a quantum system is not de®ned by its sizebut by the fact that it has to be described by a non-commutative algebra of observables: ` . . . the empiri-cal cornerstone of our present understanding ofmeasurement is the existence of non-local (EPR) cor-relations which are ubiquitous in any system requiring adescription in terms of a noncommutative algebra ofobservables. From the viewpoint of algebraic quantumtheory it is such an algebra that characterizes thequantum nature of a system. Neither its size nor itsnumber of degrees of freedom is a good criterion todistinguish `quantum' from `classical'.'89 Primas102 haspointed to Landau's103 observation that Bell's theoremis generalizable and that in any system, irrespective ofits size and physical make-up, EPR-like correlationsexist if two preconditions are jointly met:

1. The two systems have to be kinematically totallyindependent.

2. In every system there exists a set of incompatibleor complementary variables, such that an algebraof non-commuting observables is required.

While this is an abstract and theoretical formulation,it immediately makes it clear that EPR correla-tions could be operative in other than experimental


132


quantum systems. Since this is a totally unexploredarea as yet, we have to leave it at that stage, pointingout that the generalization of EPR correlations to othersystems might open up new venues for explorationand research yet to come. In any case it remains anunarguable fact that QM has experimentally veri®edfundamental connectedness at the basic level of being.In this sense, QM has introduced a moment of non-locality into our compartmentalized and localizedpicture of the world. By postulating connectionsacross spacelike and timelike 104,105 separateddomains of the universe QM is introducing a kind ofacausality which was one of the reasons for Einsteinto oppose QM. For EPR correlations do not conveyinformation in a causal sense, they are correlationswithout physical interactions. They describecorrelated or concerted actions without local inter-actions, as it were. This is a genuine feature ofinterconnectedness.

Synchronicity

Another instance of connectedness is exempli®ed bywhat was called synchronicity by Carl Gustav Jung(1875 ± 1961).106 Although the basic idea wasexpressed earlier in several places,102 it was onlyrather late in his career, 1952, that Jung publishedhis ideas together with a paper by the eminent Germanquantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli (1900 ± 1958). Thisjoint publication was the culmination of an intenseexchange of ideas over more than two decades from1931 onwards,107 the year of Pauli's crisis. Pauli was aprofessor of physics at the Technical University inZurich. By the age of 30 he had accomplished nearlyall of what had won him a world-wide reputation andwould later earn him a Nobel prize.108,109 Followingthe breakdown of his marriage he entered a severecrisis which eventually lead him to seek the help ofJung, who had a reputation as one of the leadingpsychiatrists and psychotherapists in Zurich. Jungimmediately discovered the potential of this relation-ship and recommended one of his students, ErnaRosenbaum, as an analyst to Pauli. This made Jungfree to develop and carry on a personal relationshipwith Pauli, which is re¯ected in the recently editedletters. In these letters Pauli discusses his dreams andthe progress of his therapy with Jung and scienti®cideas pertaining to the questions of the relationshipbetween mind and matter. Pauli, who had one of thesharpest minds in the physics community, deeply feltthe inadequacy of the purely quantitative, materialisticapproach to physics. This he saw expressed in manyof his own dreams which heralded a new type ofscience symbolized as new lectures to be given andnew positions to be taken. He communicated hisconcerns to Jung, who, in turn, would share hisideas about the pervasive nature of the psyche andthe common ground. This he called ùnus mundus Ðone world', which would give rise both to matter andmind. Jung also shared his ideas of what he called an

àcausal' relationship of inner, psychological statesand outer, material events. Out of this exchange ofideas developed the joint publication `NaturerklaÈrungund Psyche Ð Explanation of Nature and Psyche',which contained the ®nal form of Jung's ideas onsynchronicity and a paper of Pauli's on the develop-ment of quantitative science as re¯ected in the strug-gle between Kepler and Fludd.

Jung's notion of synchronicity is the parallel occur-rence of physical events in the material world whichcorrespond to an inner, psychological state of a personand which are related to each other by meaning. InJung's own words (translation mine)106 p31, p 26f:

An unexpected content which unmediatedly ormediatedly relates to an objective outer eventcoincides with a common psychological state:this event I call synchronicity.

I use the generic term synchronicity in the specialsense of temporal coincidence of two or moreevents, which, however, are not causally relatedwith each other and which have the same orsimilar content of meaning . . . . Thus synchroni-city in the ®rst place refers to simultaneity of acertain psychological state with one ore moreouter events, which appear as meaningful paral-lels to the momentaneous subjective state andvice versa.

By synchronicity Jung denotes (and postulates) acategory of events which can be described by thefollowing joint conditions:

1. There is a speci®c psychological state or state ofmind. Usually this is, in Jung's terminology,brought about by an activation of an archetype.This could be a personal crisis, a developmentalthreshold, a problem to be solved, etc. In anycase, it is different from ordinary waking con-sciousness in that it can be described by higheremotional and cognitive arousal and activity.

2. There is an event happening in physical, materialreality. This could be quite a chance event, like aperson dropping in by accident and giving theinformation sought.

3. These two situations are linked by meaning,which is immediately apparent to the personexperiencing the synchronistic event.

Jung placed emphasis on temporal coincidence, butthis is not a necessary condition for synchronisticevents. Temporal coincidence simply makes theexperience more striking. But the psychological statemight have been present for some time in which caseit makes not much sense to bring in the temporalrelationship between psychological state and materialevent. The decisive point is that an inner, mental,psychological state has a relationship with an outer,material, physical event or state which is not mediatedby what is commonly taken as an ef®cient cause. Notethat in a wider terminological framework which


133


would encompass also ®nal or formal causes thisproblem would not arise and one would not have tospeak of an acausal relationship. But given the scien-ti®c terminology which equates cause with ef®cientcause, and given that there is no direct known physicalinteraction between mental states and physical events,Jung calls this relationship àcausal'. This quali®ca-tion àcausal' is always to be taken as acausal in thesense of ef®cient causality. The second importantpoint is that the relationship is not determined, tech-nically speaking, by external relationships Ð by quali-®cations of the event or the state of mind which wouldbe obvious to an external observer Ð but by internalrelationships Ð by meaning. Meaning here is to betaken as an individual sense of meaning, as thesubjective meaning which the particular situationhas to a speci®c person in a special state of mind. Itis not necessarily obvious from a third-person per-spective or observable from the outside.

Here are some examples or illustrations: The ®rsttwo examples are from Jung, the other two areexamples from history. Jung himself illustrates hispoint by the example of a woman patient of his, whoseprogress in therapy came to a halt because the patientwould not want to let go of very rational and restric-tive ideas about herself and her own self-image. Inthat impass she reported a dream in which a scarabbeetle ®gured prominently. Jung tried to analyze thedream in terms of the symbolic content of what thescarabeus stands for: death and rebirth in Egyptianmythology. He pointed out that this was possibly asign for her to let die some old concepts in order fora new self to be born, without much avail. In thatmoment of therapeutic impass something bangedagainst the window, which Jung found to be a rosebeetle, which, in our area, is the closest relative to thescarabeus. He presented this `scarabeus' to his patient,who was so stunned that she gave up her resistanceand progressed in therapy.

The second example is taken from the book`L'inconnu et les ProbleÁmes psychiques' (1900, p.231, quoted by Jung, 1952, p. 14, note 1):

A certain M Deschamps was once given a pieceof plum pudding in Orleans, by an M de Font-gibu, when he was a boy. Ten years later he saw aplum pudding in a restaurant in Paris and orderedone. But it turned out that this piece of plumpudding was already ordered by M de Fontgibu.Many years later, M Deschamps was invited tohave plum pudding as a specialty. At the dinnertable he remarked that now only M de Fontgibuwas missing. At that moment the door opened anda senile, disoriented old man came in. It was M deFontgibu who had mistaken an address andwrongly stepped into this closed society.

The third example is taken from history:110 Duringthe Middle Ages the Spanish jews were oppressed bythe Christian rulers of Spain after the reconquista. The

kabbalah had been compiled there; one of the compi-lers is considered to be Rabbi Moses of Leon. One ofhis successors was his student, Rabbi Samuel benAbraham Abula®a. He decided to travel to Rome todiscuss the sad state of Jewish affairs with the Pope.When he started his journey he had a good chance fora fair talk, since the Pope was Peter of Spain, arenowned philosopher, originally from Portugal, whohad taught at the University of Paris and was open-minded. But meanwhile Peter had died and the newPope, Nicholas III, gave out the order to take Abula®acaptive and burn him on the stake, should he proceedtowards Rome. Abula®a, who was of course warned,did not pay attention to the threat and wanderedtowards Rome. When he entered Rome on 22August 1280, the Pope died.

The last example is taken from Pauli's life.108 Pauliwas a converted Jew. Although he was denomination-ally Catholic, he did not care much for his newreligion, and was raised in the spirit of scienti®cmaterialism. Ernst Mach was his godfather. And yethe had retained a basic sense of spirituality andthereby was drawn to Jung's psychology. Pauli'steacher was Sommerfeld, after whom the Sommerfeld®ne structure constant was named. This is a constant,which, as a dimensionless number, describes theelectric elementary charge as electron charge squaredtimes 2p, divided by the speed of light times Planck'sconstant. It is an important natural constant which,according to Pauli, is decisive in developing a general®eld theory, to be precise: Pauli thought that thedevelopment of a general ®eld theory was dependenton the deeper understanding of the numerical value ofthis constant, which is approximately 1=137. Pauli hadlearnt from Gershom Scholem that the numericalvalue for the Hebrew word `Kabbalah ± HLBQ' wasH� 100, L� 30, B� 2, Q� 5, which is 137. Wolf-gang Pauli died 15 December 1958 in room number137 in the Rotkreuzspital in Zurich. Enz, whorecounts this story and who visited him shortlybefore his death, remarked that Pauli was wellaware of this meaningful coincidence and was quitesure that he would not leave this room alive.

Synchronicity depends on the subjective meaning,which relates inner psychological state and outerphysical event. All examples and stories of synchro-nicity are by de®nition third-person accounts, becausethe experience of synchronicity is by de®nition sub-jective, since personal meaning is subjective. In thatsense all of the above examples cannot do more thanexemplify occasions which might be counted asinstances of synchronicity. Each person will in theend be the sole arbiter of what is a synchronisticevent.

While Jung and some of his followers111 apparentlywant to reserve the term `synchronicity' for rareoccasions of numinous experiences, some remarks ofJung's and general observations favour a wider stancewith synchronistic events as facets of reality


134


complementary to ef®cient causality (or ef®cientcausality complemented by ®nal causality, in theAristotelean framework). Jung himself, in a footnotein his original article (p. 85, note 7), remarked that itcould well be the case that synchronistic events mightbe more common than he himself at present wanted toadmit. In a letter explaining synchronicity,112 Jungstates that the fact that some people could produceparanormal events could be explained by invokingsynchronicity: these individuals, he said, are capableof entering a state of mind which evokes archetypesand thus make synchronistic events possible. If thisexplanation were to be adopted, then synchronisticevents in the sense of Jung would be amenable tocontrol under certain circumstances. Furthermore, inhis correspondence with Pauli,107 Jung emphasizes thefact that synchronicity should be viewed as a principleof relating events which complements causalitythereby implying that synchronicity could be just asfundamental a relationship as (ef®cient) causality.Taken together this would mean that synchronicity,as Jung and Pauli understood it, would have served asa principle of connecting inner, mental states andouter, physical reality by a bridge of meaning, with-out, and this is the important point, a material inter-action of the type of ef®cient causality.

From this perspective we can sum up: Jung andPauli generated the idea that psychological states andphysical events could be acausally connected via anelement of meaning. This relationship could be acomplementary fundamental form of relatedness. Itwould be acausal in the sense of ef®cient causality,yet it would be the expression of a de®nitive form ofrelatedness. In a synchronistic event outer realitybehaves in a way corresponding to an inner state ofmind, or vice versa, mediated by meaning.

Semiotics

This leads us on to discuss semiotics. Semiotics, takenas a general theory of signs, deals with the productionof meaning. Decidedly developed among others by theeminent American philosopher, logician and mathe-matician Charles S Peirce, semiotics can be seen as afundamental theory of relationship by meaning.113 ± 117

Peirce thought that the whole universe can be seenas an evolving system of signs which were inter-connected. He introduced a basic triad, which hetakes to be fundamental categories. He sometimescalls them ®rstness, secondness, and thirdness, some-times he uses the semiotic terms object, sign andinterpretant. Every sign, he says, stands for anobject, and produces a certain meaning in the mindof someone interpreting the sign. This meaning, or`relation-of-the-sign-to-its-object',117 can again be-come another sign, signifying the preceding meaningas its object, thereby generating a new interpretant ormeaning, ànd so on, endlessly'.118 This web of mean-ing is woven by interconnected triadic relationships of

signs signifying objects and thereby generating mean-ing. In the words of Peirce himself:

A Sign, or Representamen, is a First which standsin such a genuine triadic relation to a Second,called its Object, as to be capable of determininga Third, called its Interpretant.118 (2.274)

A sign or representamen, is something whichstands to somebody for something in somerespect or capacity. It addresses somebody, thatis creates in the mind of that person an equivalentsign . . . . That sign which it creates I call theinterpretant of the ®rst sign. The sign stands forsomething, its object.115 (2.228)

It should be noted that this triadic relationship withmeaning mediating between the sign and the object, asit were, leaves room for interpretation. While in amechanistic framework an ef®cient cause, all circum-stances being equal, always and irrevocably producesits effect, in a semiotic perspective an object may havedifferent effects according to the meaning which areperceived by recipients of the sign, signifying theobject. Thure von UexkuÈll, the doyen of Germanpsychosomatic medicine, pointed out that, while thediscourse of cause and effect always is in diadicrelations of cause and effect, the semiotic viewpointis expressed in triadic relations thereby breaking thequasi-deterministic relationship into an open one,where a cause, seen as an object in a semiotic triad,does not always have the same effect or meaning, butthis effect depends on the particular meaning gener-ated.119 ± 122 This situation is graphically depicted inFigure 1. One could visualize the emergence of mean-ing or triadic relations out of causal or diadic relationsas a gradual growth of complexity and degrees offreedom, as systems grow more complex. In such aview, causal relationships would be special cases ofmore complex triadic semiotic relationships which inbasic contexts break down to simple diadic cause ±effect relationships. Thus the triad would be thegeneral case and the causal diad the specialty. Asmaterial systems aggregate and form more complexautopoietic and living systems, the capacity to under-stand and generate meaning grows out of the original,

Figure 1 Causal and semiotic relatino according to von UexkuÈ ll.For explanation see text.


135


simple elements, which in Peirce's terminology wouldalready have very basic, crystallized potentials formeaning. In more complex systems, however, thedegrees of freedom would grow thus generatingsemiosis or communication by signs. UexkuÈll pointsout that many biological and immunological processesindeed are semiotic processes, and that an analysis interms of cause and effect is not adequate.119 Anantigen, for example, is not a cause for illness to anorganism which is immunocompetent. It is a sign toactivate certain antibody-generating cells. It is atotally different sign to an organism which is notimmunocompetent. It even can be no sign at all, asit were, if the antigenetic potential is not recognized asin highly virulent diseases like rabies, thereby becom-ing a direct cause of death. Note that causality in thiscase is the absence of a differential meaning of anobject Ð the antigen Ð as a sign. I would venture tosay: cause in semiotic terms means the absence of signcharacteristics or meaning. This analysis shows thatcauses are special cases of signs, and usually, at leastin the intercourse of cognitively competent persons,meaning prevails causing.

I have pointed out that homeopathic therapy can beanalyzed in semiotic terms:123,124 the symptoms of adisease signify the disease, taken as an object. Theyare signs for the intrinsic, and according to Hahne-mann unobservable, object `disease'. Taken togetherthey have a speci®c meaning, the homeopathicremedy, in the mind of the trained homeopath. Bychoosing a remedy from the homeopathic materiamedica the homeopath also enters a semiotic process.He tries to understand the meaning of the illness,which would be the homeopathic remedy indicated bythe symptom picture. This he can do, because themateria medica contains a lot of signs and symptoms,which had been produced in homeopathic provings byvolunteers. Thus, homeopathy can be seen as match-ing one type of meaning, the one given by thesymptoms of the sick person, with another one,given by the symptoms of remedies in the materiamedica. Homoeopathy in fact is applied semiotics.The similia rule connects the two semiotic spheres ofillness and remedies.

Magic of signs: the semiotics ofsynchronicity

We are now in a position to put together the pieces.My suggestion is in fact quite simple. I propose lettinggo of a causal, local interpretation of homoeopathyand homeopathic remedies as causal agents. Homeo-pathic remedies are signs, not causes. Their signcharacter is, however, not ®xed by any ìnformational'content present in the remedies. It is of a magicalnature. It activates the general connectedness by therituals of producing remedies, teaching and studyingtheir nature, studying the patient's symptoms andprescribing the appropriate remedy, and ®nally apply-

ing the remedy. The success of these rituals probablydepends more on states of mind, as usually admitted.We don't know anything about this, because there isno research in this area as yet. But very likely some ofthe conditions posed by Jung as a prerequisite forsynchronistic events to happen are present.

Usually homeopathy produces its most remarkableeffects either in very acute or very chronic cases.These are usually exceptional cases where patients,doctors, and relatives are likely to be in activatedstates of mind. Seen as a synchronistic event, homeo-pathy would be acausal, not dependent on a localef®cient cause, but dependent on a speci®c state ofmind, perhaps in the doctor, the patient, or both. Thesynchronicity occurs when the semiotic process, theùnderstanding of the case' in the homeopath, gener-ates a meaning.

This, of course, is only a tentative approach. Itleaves a lot of questions unanswered. How does thissynchronistic event trigger healing? Is it perhaps onlya minute change in the organism which is effected bythis synchronistic process, which then in turn leads toa whole cascade of self-healing responses? Exactlyhow do the spheres of meaning Ð or consciousness Ðand physical reality interact? In that sense my propo-sal seems to destroy more than it offers. It certainly isdestructive in the sense that it denies a causal, localef®cacy of homeopathy, which will bring me in starkopposition to mainstream opinions within homeop-athy.125 But it might be constructive in the long run,because it makes predictions and warnings.

I would predict that it is not possible to ®nd asingle, reproducible causal model of homeopathiceffects, either in fundamental research or in clinicalresearch, as long as the role of psychological states insynchronistic events is not understood. In the lan-guage of transpersonal psychology: Homoeopathyprobably is a state dependent healing techniquewhich can only be researched consistently, if theaccording states of mind are understood. If the lan-guage of the generalized EPR correlatedness may beapplied here, this could mean that homeopathydepends on the presence of complementary states (ofmind?). This certainly needs clari®cation in termino-logy and empirical content.

If synchronistic events are misunderstood in theframework of ef®cient causality they are lost. Theycan not be replicated at will, neither will they turn upaccording to a general rule, since we have not under-stood the rule so far. The similia principle indicatesonly a necessary condition. It is not at all certain thatit is also a suf®cient condition. Therefore the researchstrategy for homeopathy should not be focused onproving the causal nature of homoeopathy, whichmight not exist. It should rather be oriented towardsdemonstrating its general usefulness and effectivenessas opposed to pharmacological ef®cacy.

My analysis brings homeopathy in close proximityto other paranormal or anomalous disciplines, like


136


distant healing, extrasensory perception or psycho-kinesis. There is a lesson to be learned from thesedisciplines: although a series of meta-analyses haveshown impressively signi®cant and sometimesimpressively large effects,126 ± 132 they are far fromaccepted by mainstream science. There are severalreasons for this state of affairs. One is that earlyclaims could not be reproduced by more controlledstudies.133 ± 135 Another reason is that there are theo-retical problems associated with anomalous pheno-mena. As long as we do not understand them anddon't have a proper theory which can accomodatethem, they will not be recognized, despite the empiri-cal evidence. But they are also elusive. Critics fail toreplicate results, which points to the possibility thatthe results might be dependent on the states of mind ofexperimenters. As long as these phenomena remainobscure, there will be no suf®cient replicability. Butthese other areas of anomalous research are in a farmore comfortable position than homeopathy.Although effects sizes are sometimes small, the sig-ni®cances in these meta-analyses are beyond doubt.This means the effects are more stable. This is sobecause there has been more research effort directedtowards replication of the same experimental para-digm again and again. This could mean that effects ofthat type Ð and I take synchronistic effects to be oneexample of direct mind ± matter interaction effects Ðcan only be discovered in a large ensemble of data.Therefore homeopathic research should opt for somevery simple, easy to do and cheap experimentalparadigms which would have to be repeated a greatmany times in order to tease out the effect. Thiscertainly can't be done with clinical research, whichis expensive. Clinical research should therefore beopen in a way that it does not force the system toperform in a causal way.136,137 This would implyintroducing a deliberate element of uncertainty. Thiscould be the usage of formula remedies in which onenever can be sure which was the curative agent. Thiscould mean deliberately leaving out the questionwhether the remedy or the whole setting of homeo-pathy is the curative agent. One way of doing thiswould be to focus more on open, randomised com-parative trials which compare real-life homeopathy toother clinical approaches. In open trials one couldalways argue that the homeopathic remedies were notat stake, but the whole therapeutic approach, thusleaving open the question whether homeopathic reme-dies are placebos or not. My prediction would be thatthe more trials and experiments focus on the questionof whether homeopathic dilutions are causal agents ornot, the more negative results will be produced and itwill be only in the very long run that a positive overallresult could be ®ltered out of the data.

Another suggestion following from this approachwould be that, in order to understand the action ofhomeopathy it may be vital to research the mental orpsychological processes in patients and doctors as a

moderating variable of therapeutic ef®cacy. By admit-ting that homeopathy could be quite an ef®cient formof magic, thereby pointing to the importance of thestates of mind, homeopaths could possibly understandbetter, what happens. If we tentatively adopt thepossibility that generalized EPR correlatedness couldgive the background for understanding synchronisticevents, then it would be necessary to focus on possiblecandidates for complementary variables in the mind ofthe homeopath or in the system of homeopathy as awhole. And perhaps this would prove to be a veryprogressive attitude. It could well be the case thateven in orthodox medicine states of mind are moreimportant than the causal pharmacological paradigmwould make us believe. This could be a more promis-ing way of linking up with mainstream medicine than®ghting the battle for causal agency of remedies.

In sum, I propose to abstain from a causal inter-pretation of homeopathy. Instead I contend thathomeopathy is an acausal event, similar to synchro-nistic events. The homeopathic medicine is a signwhich mediates the meaning between a mental-psy-chological state, the illness in the patient, and thephysical realm of bodily functions, elements of nature,and the like. It acts via the original interconnectednessof all beings, which is activated, as in magical rituals,by the homeopathic ritual of case taking, remedypreparation, repertorization and remedy prescription.My hunch would be that homeopathy is only oneexample of a whole range of phenomena of the samecategory, which are neglected by mainstream science,because we do not have a proper understanding ofthem. The understanding, I would guess, can onlycome out of the analysis of mental states, and not ofpurported causal content. Maybe further analysisalong the line of generalized EPR correlatednesscould point the way to understanding acausal, syn-chronistic events in general, magic as an instancethereof, and homeopathy as a special case. Even ifthis should come as a narcissistic shock to many, itmight be curative on the long run.

Acknowledgments

The initial idea of this work was supported by theCarl-und-Veronica-Carstens Stiftung. I am gratefulto H Atmanspacher, G Mahler, and Wv Lucadou,from whom I have learned much. Physical misconcep-tion, which might still be contained in my ideas,are certainly not due to them. The ®nal workwas supported by the Institut fuÈr Grenzgebiete derPsychologie, Freiburg.

References

1 Scholem G. Die juÈdische Mystik in ihren HaupstroÈmungen[Main Currents of Jewish Mysticism]. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,1980, p. 384.

2 Kleijnen J, Knipschild P, ter Riet G. Clinical trials ofhomeopathy. Br Med J 1991; 302: 316 ± 323.


137


3 Linde K, Clausius N, Ramirez G, et al. Are the clinicaleffects of homeopathy placebo effects? A meta-analysis ofplacebo controlled trials. Lancet 1997; 350: 834 ± 843.

4 Reilly D, Taylor MA, Beattie NGM, Campbell JH, McSharryC. Is evidence for homeopathy reproducible? Lancet 1994;344: 1601 ± 1606.

5 Reilly DT, Taylor MA. Potent placebo or potency? Aproposed study model with initial ®ndings using homeopathi-cally prepared pollens in hayfever. Br Hom J 1985; 74:65 ± 75.

6 Reilly DT, Taylor MA, Mc Sharry C, Aitchinson T. Ishomeopathy a placebo response? Controlled trial of homeo-pathic potency with pollen in hayfever as a model. Lancet1986; 18: 881 ± 886.

7 Walach H, Gaus W, Haeusler W, et al. Classical homeo-pathic treatment of chronic headaches. A double-blind,randomized, placebo-controlled study. Cephalalgia 1997;17: 119 ± 126.

8 Whitmarsh TE, Coleston-Shields DM, Steiner TJ. Double-blind randomized placebo-controlled study of homeopathicprophylaxis of migraine. Cephalalgia 1997; 17: 600 ± 604.

9 Friese K-H, Feuchter U, Moeller H. Die homoÈopathischeBehandlung von adenoiden Vegetationen. Ergebnisse einerprospektiven randomisierten Doppelblindstudie. HNO 1997;45: 618 ± 624.

10 Kainz JT, Kozel G, Haidvogl M, Smolle J. Homeopathicversus placebo therapy of children with warts on the hands: Arandomized double-blind clinical trial. Dermatology 1996;193: 318 ± 320.

11 Vickers A, Fisher P, Smith C, Wyllie SE, Lewith GT.Homeopathy for delayed onset muscle soreness: a rando-mised double blind placebo controlled trial. Br J Sports Med1997; 31: 304 ± 307.

12 Linde K, Scholz M, Ramirez G, et al. Impact of study qualityon outcome in placebo-controlled trials of homeopathy.J Clin Epidemiol 1999; 52: 631 ± 636.

13 Linde K, Melchart D. Randomized controlled trials of indi-vidualized homeopathy: a state-of-the-art review. J AltCompl Med 1998; 4: 371 ± 388.

14 Ernst E. Are highly dilute homeopathic remedies placebos?Perfusion 1998; 11: 291 ± 292.

15 Kennedy JE, Taddonio JL. Experimenter effects in parapsy-chological research. J Parapsychol 1976; 40: 1 ± 33.

16 Walach H, Schmidt S. Empirical evidence for a non-classicalexperimenter effect: an experimental, double-blind investiga-tion of unconventional information transfer. J f Sci Explor1997; 11: 59 ± 68.

17 Barnes J, Resch KL, Ernst E. Homeopathy for postoperativeileus? A meta-analysis. J Clin Gastroenterol 1997; 25:628 ± 633.

18 Jacobs J, Jiminez LM, Gloyd S, et al. Homeopathic treatmentof acute childhood diarrhoea. Br Hom J 1993; 82: 83 ± 86.

19 Jacobs J, Jimenez LM, Gloyd SS, Gale, Crothers D. Treat-ment of acute childhood diarrhea with homeopathic medi-cine: a randomized clinical trial in Nicaragua. Pediatrics1994; 93: 719 ± 725.

20 Jacobs J, Jimenez LM, Malthouse S, et al. Homeopathictreatment of acute childhood diarrhea: results from a clinicaltrial in Nepal. J Alt Compl Med 2000; in print.

21 Gibson RG, Gibson SLM, Mac Neill AD, Buchanan WW.Homeopathic therapy in rheumatoid arthritis: Evaluation bydouble-blind clinical therapeutic trial. Br J Clin Pharmacol1980; 9: 453 ± 459.

22 Gibson RG, Gibson SLM, Mac Neill AD, Buchanan WW.Salicylates and homeopathy in rheumatoid arthritis: preli-minary observations. Br J Clin Pharmacol 1978; 6: 391 ±395.

23 Andrade LEC, Ferraz MB, Atra E, Castro A, Silva MSM. Arandomized controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness ofhomeopathy in rheumatoid arthritis. Scand J Rheumatol1991; 20: 204 ± 208.

24 Brigo B, Serpelloni G. Homeopathic treatment of migraines:a randomized double-blind controlled study of sixty cases(homeopathic remedy versus placebo). Berlin J Res Homeo-path 1991; 1: 98 ± 106.

25 Brigo B, Serpelloni G. Le traitement homeÂopathique de lamigraine: une eÂtude de 60 cas, controleÂe en double aveugle(remeÁde homeÂopathique vs placebo). J Liga MedicorumHomoeopatica Internationalis 1987; 1: 18 ± 25.

26 Straumsheim PA, Borchgrevink CF, Mowinkel P, Kierulf H,Hafslund O. Homeopatisk behandling av migrene. En dob-belt-blind, placebonkontrollert studie av 68 pasienter. Dyna-mis 1997; 2: 18 ± 22.

27 Linde K, Jonas WB, Melchart D et al. Critical review andmeta-analysis of serial agitated dilutions in experimentaltoxicology. Hum Exp Toxicol 1994; 13: 481 ± 492.

28 Benveniste J, Davenas E, Ducot B, et al. L'agitation desolutions hautement dilueÂes n'induit pas d'activiteÂ biologiquespeÂci®que. C R Acad Sci Paris 1991; 312: 461 ± 466.

29 Davenas E, Beauvais F, Amara J, Benveniste J. Humanbasophile degranulation triggered by very dilute antiserumagainst IgE. Nature 1988; 333: 816 ± 818.

30 OvelgoÈnne JH, Bol A, Hop WCJ, van Wijk R. Mechanicalagitation of very dilute antiserum against IgE has no effect onbasophil staining properties. Experientia 1992; 48: 504 ± 508.

31 Hirst SJ, Hayes NA, Burridge J, Pearce FL, Foreman JC.Human basophil degranulation is not triggered by very diluteantiserum against human IgE. Nature 1993; 366: 525 ± 527.

32 Vickers A. Independent replication of pre-clinical research inhomeopathy: A systematic review. Forschende Komplemen-taÈrmedizin 1999; 6: 311 ± 320.

33 van Wijk R, Wiegant FAC. Cultured Mammalian Cells inHomeopathy Research. The Similia Principle in Self-Recov-ery. Utrecht: Universiteit Utrecht, Faculteit Biologie, 1994.

34 van Wijk R, Wiegant FAC. The Similia Principle in Surviv-ing Stress. Mammalian Cells in Homeopathy Research.Utrecht: Utrecht University, Department of Molecular CellBiology, 1997.

35 Fisher P. Progress of the basics (editorial). Br Hom J 1999;88: 153 ± 154.

36 Belon P, Cumps J, Ennis M, et al. Inhibition of humanbasophil degranulation by succesiive histamine dilutions:results of a European multi-centre trial. In¯amm Res 1999;48: S17 ± S18.

37 Dantas F. How can we get more reliable information fromhomoepathic pathogenetic trials? A critique of provings. BrHom J 1996; 85: 230 ± 236.

38 Dantas F, Fisher P, Walach H, Wieland F, Poitevin B.Homeopathic remedy provings. An international review. BrHom J 2000; in preparation.

39 Dantas F, Fisher P. A systematic review of homeopathicpathogenetic trials (`provings') published in the United King-dom from 1945 to 1995. In: E Ernst, EG Hahn (eds).Homeopathy: A Critical Appraisal. London: Butterworth-Heineman, 1998, pp. 69 ± 97.

40 Walach H, Hieber S, Ernst-Hieber E. Effects of Belladonna12 CH and 30 CH in healthy volunteers. A multiple, single-case experiment in randomization design. In: M Bastide (ed.)S and Images. Selected Papers from the 7th and 8th GIRIMeeting, held in Montpellier, France, Nov. 20 ± 21, 1993,and Jersualem, Israel, Dec 10 ± 11, 1994. Dordrecht: Kluwer,1997, pp. 215 ± 226.

41 Walach H. Die Bedeutung unspezi®scher Therapie-Effekte.Das Beispiel HomoÈopapthie. Freiburg: UniversitaÈt Freiburg,Philosophische FakultaÈt, unver. Habilitationsschrift 1997.

42 Walach H. The pillar of homeopathy: Remedy provings in ascienti®c framework. Br Hom J 1997; 86: 219 ± 224.

43 Walach H. Does a highly diluted homeopathic drug act as aplacebo in healthy volunteers? Experimental study of Bella-donna C30. J Psychosom Res 1993; 37: 851 ± 860.

44 Donner F. Zur LoÈsung der Hochpotenzfrage. AllgemeineHomoÈopathische Zeitung 1935; 183: 81 ± 105.


138


45 Donner F. UÈ ber die Ankurbelung der homoÈopathischenForschung. Deutsche Zeitschrift fuÈr HomoÈopathie 1932; 11:180 ± 187.

46 Donner F. Arbeiten von FuÈhrern der naturwissenschaftlichenHomoÈopathie. Allgemeine HomoÈopathische Zeitung 1929;177: 40 ± 47.

47 Schoeler H. Das Hochpotenzproblem. Allgemeine HomoÈo-pathische Zeitung 1950; 195: 1 ± 38.

48 Schoeler H. UÈ ber die wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen derHomoÈopathie. Die Pharmazie, I Beiheft, I ErgaÈnzungsband1949; 469 ± 509.

49 Hume D. A Treatise of Human Nature. London: Dent, 1977.50 Parker SP (ed.). Dictionary of Physics 2nd edn. New York:

McGraw Hill, 1997, p. 248.51 Berezin AA. Isotopical positional correlations as a possible

model for Benveniste experiments. Med Hypoth 1990; 31:43 ± 45.

52 Endler PC, Pongratz W, Smith C, Schulte J, Senekowitsch F,Citron N. Non-molecular information transfer from thyroxineto frogs; by means of homeopathic preparation and electronicprocessing. In: M Bastide (ed.). Signals and Images. Dor-drecht: Kluwer, 1997, pp 149 ± 159.

53 Anagnostatos GS, Pissis P, Viras K. Possible water clusterformation by dilution and succussions. In: GS Anagnostatos,W von Oertzen (eds). Atomic and Nuclear Clusters. Heidel-berg, Berlin: Springer, 1995, pp. 215 ± 217.

54 Anagnostatos GS, Vithoulkas G, Garzonis P, Tavouxoglou C.A working hypothesis for homeopathic microdiluted reme-dies. Berlin J Res Hom 1991; 1: 141 ± 147.

55 Schulte J. Effects of potentization in aqueous solutions. BrHom J 1999; 88: 155 ± 160.

56 Bastide M, Lagache A. A communication process: a newparadigm applied to high-dilution effects on the living body.Alt Ther Health Med 1997; 3: 35 ± 39.

57 Schwartz GE, Russek LGS. The plausibility of homeopathy:the systemic memory mechanism. Integrative Med 1998; 1:53 ± 59.

58 Wilhelm von Ockham. Expositio in libris Physicorum Aris-totelis. In: GI Etzkorn (ed.). Opera Philosophica. St. Bon-venture: Franciscan Institute, 1957, pp. 616 ± 639.

59 Goddu A. William of Ockham's arguments for action at adistance. Franciscan Stud 1984; 44: 227 ± 244.

60 Bertalanffy Lv. General System Theory. New York: Brazil-ler, 1968.

61 Maturana HR. The organization of the living: a theory ofthe living organization. Int J Man-Machine Stud 1975; 7:313 ± 332.

62 Varela FJ, Maturana HR, Uribe RB. Autopoiesis: The orga-nization of living systems, its characterization and a model.Biosystems 1974; 5: 187 ± 196.

63 Maturana HR, Varela FJ. Autopoiesis and Cognition: TheRealization of the Living. Boston Studies in the Philophy ofScience Vol. 42. Boston: D Reidel, 1980.

64 Maturana HR. Autopoiesis. In: M Zeleny (ed.). Autopoiesis.A Theory of Living Organization. North-Holland: Elsevier,1981, pp. 21 ± 33.

65 Nicolis G, Prigogine I. Self-Organization in NonequilibriumSystems. New York: Wiley, 1977.

66 Prigogine I. Order through ¯uctuation: self-organization andsocial system. In: CH Waddington, E Jantsch (eds). Evolutionand Consciousness. Human Systems in Transition. Reading,MA: Addison-Wesley, 1976, pp.93 ± 126.

67 Davies P. The Cosmic Blueprint. London: Heinemann, 1987.68 Schwartz GE, Russek LGS. Registration of actual and

inteded eye gaze: Correlation with spiritual beliefs andexperiences. J Sci Explor 1999; 13: 213 ± 229.

69 Kale R. Traditional healers in South Africa: a parallel healthcare system. B M J 1995; 310: 1182 ± 1185.

70 Haraldsson E. Research on alternative therapies in Iceland.In: Johannessen et al. (eds) Studies in Alternative TherapiesOdense: Odense University Press. 1994, pp. 46 ± 50.

71 Al-Krenawi A, Graham JR, Maoz B. The healing signi®canceof the Negev's Bedouin Dervish. Soc Sci Med 1996; 43:13 ± 21.

72 Gebser J. The Ever-Present Origin. Athens: Ohio UniversityPress, 1985.

73 Tart CT. Consciousness, altered states, and worlds of experi-ence. J Transpers Psychol 1986; 18: 159 ± 170.

74 Tart CT. The basic nature of altered states of conscious-ness: a systems approach. J Transpers Psychol 1976; 8: 45 ±64.

75 Moerman DE. Anthropology of symbolic healing. CurrAnthropol 1979; 20: 59 ± 80.

76 Levi-Strauss C. Strukturale Anthropologie I. Frankfurt: Suhr-kamp, 1978.

77 Dundes A (ed.). The Evil Eye. Madison, WI: University ofWisconsin Press, 1992.

78 Elkins A. Aboriginal Men of High Degree. Sidney: Australa-sion, 1944.

79 Krippner S, Winkler M, Amiden A et al. Physiological andgeomagnetic correlates of apparent anomalous phenomenaobserved in the presence of a Brazilian `sensitive'. J SciExplor 1996; 10: 281 ± 298.

80 Naegeli-Osjord H. Logurgie in den Philippinen. Remagen:Otto-Reichel Verlag, 1982.

81 Van De Castle RL. Anthropology and psychic research.Phoenix 1977; 1: 27 ± 35.

82 Leibniz GW. Monadologie. In: A Buchenau, E Cassirer(eds). Hauptschriften zur Grundlegung der Philosophie.Hamburg: Meiner, 1966, pp. 435 ± 456.

83 Schopenhauer A. Versuch uÈber das Geistersehen. In: W vonLoÈhneysen (ed.). Parerga und Paralipomena. Kleine philo-sophische Schriften Bd. I. Darmstadt: WissenschaftlicheBuchgesellschaft, 1968, p. 319f.

84 Neumann E. Ursprungsgeschichte des Bewubtseins.MuÈnchen: Kindler, 1968.

85 Panofsky E. Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art.Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell, 1960.

86 Leibniz GW. Hauptschriften zur Grundlegung der Philoso-phie. Hamburg: Meiner, 1966.

87 Whyte LL. Essay on Atomism. From Democritus to 1960.Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1961.

88 Whitehead AN. Process and Reality. Corrected Edition byD.R. Grif®n & D.W. Sherburne. 1st edn. 1929 New York:Free Press, 1978.

89 Atmanspacher H. Metaphysics taken literally. In Honor ofKalervo Laurikainen's 80th Birthday. In: U Ketvel (ed.).Festschrift in Honor of K.V. Laurikainen's 80th Birthday(Vastakohtien todelisuus-Juhlakirja professori K.V. Laurikai-sen 80-vuotisp). Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press, 1996,pp. 49 ± 59.

90 Bell JS. Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

91 Rae AIM. Quantum Physics: Illusion or Reality. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1986.

92 Aspect A, Grangier P, Roger G. Experimental realization ofEinstein-Podolsky-Rosen-Bohm Gedankenexperiment: Anew violation of Bell's inequalities. Phys Rev Let 1982; 49:91 ± 94.

93 Aspect A, Dalibard J, Roger; G. Experimental test of Bell'sinequalities using time varying analyzers. Phys Rev Lett1982; 49: 1804 ± 1807.

94 Elby A. Should we explain the EPR correlations causally?Phil Sci 1992; 59: 16 ± 25.

95 Redhead M. Nonlocality and peaceful coexistence. In: RSwinburne (ed.). Space, Time, and Causality. Dordrecht:Reidel, 1983, pp. 151 ± 189.

96 Fine A. Do correlations need to be explained? In: JT Cushing,E Mcmullin (eds). Philosophical Consequences ofQuantum Theory: Re¯ections on Bell's Theorem. NotreDame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989, pp.176 ± 194.


139


97 Jarrett JP. Bell's theorem: a guide to the implications. In: JTCushing, E Mcmullin (eds) Philosophical Consequences ofQuantum Theory: Re¯ections on Bell's Theorem. NotreDame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989, pp.60 ± 79.

98 Mermin ND. Can you help your team tonight by watching onTV? More experimental metaphysics from Einstein,Podolsky, and Rosen. In: JT Cushing, E Mcmullin (eds).Philosophical Consequences of Quantum Theory: Re¯ectionson Bell's Theorem. Notre Dame, IN: University of NotreDame Press, 1989, pp. 38 ± 59.

99 Primas H. Realism and quantum mechanics. In: D Prawitz, BSkyrms, D Westerstahl (eds). Logic, Methodology and Phi-losophy of Science IX: Proceedings of the Ninth InternationalContress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science,Uppsala, Sweden, August 7 ± 14, 1991. Amsterdam: Elsevier,1994, pp. 609 ± 631.

100 Primas H. The Cartesian cut, the Heisenberg cut, and disen-tangled observers. In: KV Laurikainen, C Montonen (eds).Symposia on the Foundations of Modern Physics 1992: TheCopenhagen Interpretation and Wolfgang Pauli. Singapore:World Scienti®c, 1993, pp. 245 ± 269.

101 Josephson BD, Pallikari-Viras F. Biological utilization ofquantum nonlocality. Found Phys 1991; 21: 197 ± 207.

102 Primas H. SynchronizitaÈt und Zufall. Zeitschrift fuÈr Para-psychologie und Grenzgebiete der Psychologie 1996; 38:61 ± 91.

103 Landau LJ. Experimental tests of general quantum theories.Lett Math Phys 1987; 14: 33 ± 40.

104 Mahler G. Quantum information. In: K Kornwachs, K Jacoby(eds). Information. New Questions to a MultidisciplinaryConcept. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1995, pp. 103 ± 118.

105 Mahler G. Temporal Bell inequalities: a journey to the limitsof `Consistent Histories'. In: H Atmanspacher, G Dalenoort(eds). Inside versus Outside. Berlin: Springer. 1994, pp.195 ± 205.

106 Jung CG. SynchronizitaÈt als ein Prinzip akausaler Zusam-menhaÈnge. In: CG Jung, W Pauli (eds). NaturerklaÈrung undPsyche. ZuÈrich: Rascher, 1952, pp.31; 26f.

107 Maier AC. Wolfgang Pauli und C.G. Jung. Ein Briefwechsel1932 ± 1958. Heidelberg: Springer, 1992, pp. 57 ± 64.

108 Enz CP. Rationales und Irrationales im Leben WolfgangPaulis. In: H Atmanspacher, H Primas, E Wertenschlag-BirkhaÈuser (eds). Der Pauli-Jung-Dialog und seine Bedeu-tung fuÈr die moderne Wissenschaft. Berlin, Heidelberg:Springer, 1995, pp. 21 ± 32.

109 Pietschmann H. Die Physik und die PersoÈnlichkeit vonWolfgang Pauli. In: H Atmanspacher, H Primas, E Wertens-chlag-BirkhaÈuser (eds). Der Pauli-Jung-Dialog und seineBedeutung fuÈr die moderne Wissenschaft. Berlin, Heidelberg:Springer, 1995, pp. 33 ± 47.

110 Clevenot M. Im Herzen des Mittelalters. Geschichte desChristentums im XII und XIII. Jahrhundert. Luzern:Exodus, 1992.

111 Mans®eld V. Synchronicity, Science, and Soul-Making.Understanding Jungian Synchronicity through Physics, Bud-dhism, and Philosophy. Chicago and La Salle, II: OpenCourt, 1995.

112 Jung CG. Ein Brief zur Frage der SynchronizitaÈt. In: HBender (ed.). Parapsychologie. Entwicklung, Ergebnisse,Probleme. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,1980, pp. 747 ± 754.

113 Peirce CS. Naturordnung und Zeichenprozess. Schriften uÈberSemiotik und Naturphilosophie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1991.

114 Fisch M. The range of Peirce's relevance. The Monist 1982;65: 123 ± 142.

115 Sebeok TA. The doctrine of signs. J Soc Biol Struct 1986; 9:345 ± 352.

116 Brent J. Charles Sanders Peirce. A Life. Bloomington:Indiana University Press, 1993.

117 Sheriff JK. Charles Peirce's Guess at the Riddle. Groundsfor Human Signi®cance. Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress, 1994, p. 35.

118 Peirce CS. Collected Papers. Ed. Ch. Hartshorne & P.Weiss: Bd. 1 ± 6; Ed. A. Burks: Bd. 7 ± 8. Cambridge: HarvardUniversity Press, 1931, 2.274.

119 UexkuÈll Tv. Biosemiotic research and not further molecularanalysis is necessary to describe pathways between cells,personalities, and social systems. Advances. J Mind-BodyHealth 1995; 11: 24 ± 27.

120 UexkuÈll Tv. Naturwissenschaft als Zeichenlehre. In: Merkur:Deutsche Zeitschrift fuÈr europaÈisches Denken 1989; 43:225 ± 234.

121 UexkuÈll Tv, Wesiack W. Theorie der Humanmedizin. Grun-dlagen aÈrztlichen Denkens und Handelns. MuÈnchen: Urban& Schwarzenberg, 1988.

122 UexkuÈll Tv. Commentaries on `The doctrine of signs' byThomas Sebeok. J Soc Biol Struct 1986; 9: 353 ± 354.

123 Walach H. HomoÈopathie und moderne Semiotik. In: WKuÈmmel (ed.). Jahrbuch des Instituts fuÈr Geschichte derMedizin der Robert-Bosch-Stiftung. Stuttgart: Hippokrates,1988, pp. 135 ± 160.

124 Walach H. Homeopathy as semiotic. Semiotica 1991; 83:81 ± 95.

125 Vithoulkas G. The Science of Homeopathy. New York: GrovePress, 1980.

126 Bem DJ, Honorton C. Does PSI exist? Replicable evidencefor an anomalous process of information transfer. PsycholBull 1994; 115: 4 ± 18.

127 Braud WG, Schlitz MJ. Conscious interactions with remotebiological systems: Anomalous intentionality effects. SubtleEnergies 1994; 2: 1 ± 46.

128 Delanoy DL. Experimental evidence suggestive of anoma-lous consciousness interactions. In: DN Ghista (ed.) Biome-dical and Life Physics. Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1996, pp.397 ± 410.

129 Radin DI. The Conscious Universe. The Scienti®c Truthof Psychic Phenomena. San Francisco: Harper Collins,1997.

130 Radin DI, Nelson RD. Evidence for consciousness-relatedanomalies in random physical systems. Found Phys 1989; 19:1499 ± 1514.

131 Schlitz M, Braud W. Distant intentionality and healing:Assessing the evidence. Alt Ther Health Med 1997; 3:38 ± 53.

132 Utts J. Replication and meta-analysis in parapsychology.Statist Sci 1991; 6: 363 ± 404.

133 Milton J, Wiseman R. Does PSI exist? Lack of replication ofan anomalous process of information transfer. Psychol Bull1999; 125: 387 ± 391.

134 Milton J, Wiseman R. A meta-analysis of mass media tests ofextrasensory perception. Br J Psychol 1999; 90: 235 ± 240.

135 Wiseman R, Smith M, Milton J. Can animals detect whentheir owners are returning home? An experimental test ofthe `psychic pet' phenomenon. Br J Psychol 1998; 89:453 ± 462.

136 Lucadou WV. The model of pragmatic information (MPI).Eur J Parapsychol 1995; 11: 58 ± 75.

137 Lucadou WV. Wigner's friend revitalized? In: H Atman-spacher, GJ Dalenoort (eds). Inside versus Outside. Berlin:Springer, 1994, pp. 369 ± 388.


140


Documents

Magic of signs: a non-local interpretation of … AND DEBATE Magic of signs: a non-local interpretation of homeopathy{H Walach1* 1University Hospital Freiburg, Department of Environmental