Homeopathy was discovered by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann at the end of the eighteenth century. Around 1790, when he discovered its first laws, science was in its initial stages of development. Though he discovered a revolutionary and one of the most dynamic system of medicine yet he could not explore its depth and scientific relevance. Because of the general level of thinking in his time he could define its nature in the framework of the existing stage of knowledge. Therefore, at many places he remarked that homeopathic remedies are spirit-like or dynamic in nature. Sharing the belief of his time he frequently used the word “vital” meaning divine or away from human intervention, to describe it. He could not define it in any other way because of the prevailing matter-spirit dichotomy in human thinking in those days.
At the end of the18th century people still believed in the dual nature of existence; concrete (material) and divine (spiritual). It was believed that the material existence was solid, stationary, tangible and lifeless while the divine existence was spirit-like, ethereal, invisible and approachable through mental processes like meditation only. They thought that the spiritual existence is vital and subtle in nature, therefore, it is not tangible to human perception. The concept of dual existence was also popular in the Indian philosophy where the ideas of Jarh (Inert) and chetan (Concious) were considered as essential concepts of philosophy. This concept penetrated many fields of thought particularly religions and philosophy till the turn of the 19th century. All that was not visible and not perceived by the human sense organs was considered ethereal and spiritual meaning divine in nature. However, when with the growth of science man was able to peep into the secrets of nature, this concept was challenged. It was discovered that what was considered spiritual was actually material too. It became a fundamental concept of science and philosophy that at the micro level everything that existed was material.
The first notable philosopher to refute the spiritual theory was Thomas Hobbes who declared in his Leviathan (1651) that nothing exists in this universe except matter, and that there is no place of a spirit in it. But people did not take his observation seriously because he was not a scientist who could prove it scientifically. He was only applying the heliocentric model of Copernicus to explain human nature. Therefore, his philosophic notion of the revolving gray particles in the brain, often called mechanical materialism, remained just a rudimentary concept of the nature of the universe. It just served as an important landmark in the journey towards understanding the world from materialist angle.
The next in line was John Dalton who forwarded a definite version of Hobbes theory in the early 19th century. Building on the Ionic theory of the ancient Greeks, he proposed the modern atomic theory in which he suggested that all matter is composed of indivisible particles called atoms, each with its own unique properties. Lending support to this view Antoine Lavoisier’s work in the early 19th century proved that matter can neither be created not destroyed. He forwarded his law of conservation of mass which stated that in a closed system, the mass of the substances before a chemical reaction must equal to the mass of the substances after the reaction. The concept of spiritualism got a further setback with Michael Faraday's experiments in the early 19th century which revealed the intimate relationship between electricity and magnetism. His discovery of electromagnetic induction demonstrated that a changing magnetic field can induce an electric current in a conductor which confirmed the material origin of electricity which was a spirit-like invisible and mysterious force. Scientists like Sadi Carnot, Rudolf Clausius, and Lord Kelvin discovered the law of thermodynamics which defined relationship between matter and heat energy from various angles.
But the most fatal blow to the theory of spiritualism was caused by Henri Becquerel’s accidental discovery of radioactivity. Marie and Pierre Curie who further investigated this phenomenon and demonstrated that certain elements like Radium undergo spontaneous perceptible dissipation or decay. It challenged the notion of the stability of matter and paved the way for the emergence of another field of science namely Nuclear Physics. Dmitri Mendeleev developed the periodic table of elements in 1869 which helped the new branch in accurately predicting the atomic mass and chemical properties of even the undiscovered elements.
The most crucial in this respect, however, was Thomas Young's double-slit experiment in the early 19th century followed by experiments by scientists such as James Clerk Maxwell and Albert Einstein which demonstrated that matter exhibits both wave-like and particle-like behavior. Just as the wings of a moving fan can not be seen or spotted; sometimes seen running in a reverse direction, does not refute their material existence, similarly the wave like property of matter does not diffuse its massive character. The wave-particle duality rather challenged the classical notion of matter while laying groundwork for the development of quantum mechanics. The experiments of James Clerk Maxwell and Ludwig Boltzmann contributed to the development of the kinetic theory of gases in the 19th century which explained the behavior of gases in terms of the motion of their constituent particles. It provided a microscopic understanding of gas properties for the atomic model of matter.
The late 19th century and early 20th century saw the development of quantum theory, which further revolutionized our understanding of the behavior of matter at atomic and subatomic levels. Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schrödinger’s introduced the concept of quantum energy that is the quantity levels in wave-particle duality, which fundamentally altered our understanding of the nature of matter and energy. Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity, published in 1905, ultimately enhanced this understanding radically. The theory mathematically proved that matter and energy are interchangeable (as described by the famous equation E=mc²). It challenged the classical notions of mass and energy providing a unified framework for understanding the behavior of matter and energy at high speeds.
Along with these developments the growth of medical science since the production of laboratory production of urea, which was considered a vital product, from its constituents in 1830, lent a great support in dissipating the concept of spiritualism. Though the votaries of spiritualism, like the famous Austrian Physicist Ernest Mach continued to save its face till the beginning of the 20th century but their arguments evaporated like dew in sunshine when V. I. Lenin confronted them with Materialism and Empiro-Criticism written in 1908 and published in 1911. He provided a new definition of matter commensurate with the overall developments in science in which he included everything perceptible to human mind including abstract thought- already discovered or to be discovered in future- in the category of matter. He denied the possibility of spirit and spiritualism in the existence of the universe and its reflection in human mind.
Thus, looking from this angle, which is the only viable angle for us to look at, homeopathic remedies are not spiritual but material. Though it is not yet clear how they materially survive and act in higher potencies which surpass the existence of the electrons. But because they act, is a sufficient proof of their material character. Homeopathy furnishes a clear evidence of Lenin’s new definition of materialism which states that matter is infinite and that human searches will reveal endless layers within its folds.
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