RELEVANCE OF CONCEPT OF VITAL FORCE IN

LIGHT OF MODERN sciences

FROMDR. ANJU JETHANI m.d. (hom.)

SENIOR MEDICAL OFFICER,MEDICAL CENTER, HIGH COURT OF DELHI, DTE. OF AYUSH,

GNCT OF DELHISENIOR LECTURER, DEPT. OF ORGANON OF MEDICINE,

NHMC & HOSPITAL, GOVT. OF NCT OF DELHI.

E-MAIL: DRANJUJETHANI@GMAIL.COM

DIFFERING VIEWS OF LIVING SYSTEMS

REDUCTIONIST OR MECHANISTIC VIEW

Mechanistic view is a doctrine that the

processes of life are explicable by the laws

of physics and chemistry.

Disease is conceptualized as a defect of physico-chemical processes of

the body that need to be ‘repaired’ and restored to the BIOMEDICALLY

DEFINED NORMS.

ALLOPATHIC VIEW

WHOLISTIC ORVITALISTIC VIEW(concept of vital force)

Vitalism is a doctrine that the sensations and functions of a living organism are due to a vital principle distinct

from physicochemical forces.

An individual is seen as a unified, dynamic, non-linear, complex living

system, which has functions in part self

determining and inexplicable in terms of

mechanistic explanations.

HOMOEOPATHIC VIEW

TO ESTABLISH THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CONCEPT

OF VITAListic view of life:TWO QUESTION ARISE??

Why reject reductionistic or allopathic view??

Is concept of vital force (modified to life principle)

acceptable in modern sciences??

Why reject reductionism??

The following discussion from the works of Ernst Mayr, Alexis

Carrel, Windelband Wilhelm & George Ernst Stahl establish the reason for

rejecting the reductionistic view of life and highlights the need to accept the vitalistic concept of

health and disease.

Why reject reductionism??

‘The claim that every attribute of complex living systems can be explained through the study of the lowest components (molecules, genes or whatever) struck me as absurd.

Living organisms form a hierarchy of ever more complex systems, from molecules, cells

and tissues through whole organisms, populations and species. In each higher

system, characteristics emerge that could not have been predicted from a knowledge

of the components.’

Ernst Mayr, ‘This is Biology: The Science of Living World’

The phenomena exhibited by living organism in health or in disease can never be explained by the exact determinist equations of

thermodynamic or of motion since that would exclude the central concept of SELF ORGANISING

PATTERN– the ability of organism to respond in non-linear fashion.

‘It is important to understand that, in spite of the great triumphs of molecular biology, biologists still

know very little about how we breathe or how a wound heals or how an embryo develops into an

organism.’

‘All of the coordinating activities of life can only be grasped when life is understood as a self-

organizing network.’

……….Alexis Carrel, Man, The Unknown

‘Reductionism is like trying to create a whole web by examining a single strand of the web. One strand gives no analytical clue to the overall

pattern, just as a single brick or stone gives no visible clue to the architecture of a building.’

Moreover, reductionist model ought to fail in the complex self organizing system of living beings

since the actual manifestation of disease is always multi-causal and depends on the

conjunction of precipitating psychosocial and pathogenic factors along with constitutional susceptibilities in particular organ systems.’

Windelband Wilhelm, A History of Philosophy, Macmillan, New York

……..George Ernst Stahl (1660-1734)

While it is true that all living organisms are ultimately made of atoms and molecules, they are not ‘nothing but’ atoms and molecules.

There is something else to life, something non material and irreducible – a pattern of

organization, that something that maintains harmonious functioning of the all the organ

systems.

In fact the word ‘Individual’ is derived from the Latin root ‘individuous’ – in

(not) and dividuos (divisible).

This concept is beautifully highlighted in the writings of B.K. Sarkar who states

that ‘individual is that which is indivisible; indivisible not in the sense that it is incapable of being divided into parts but that it cannot be so divided in

its nature and remain what it is.

Acceptability of concept of vital force in modern sciences??

• MODERN PHYSICS

• DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY (EMBRYOLOGY)

• CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE

MODERN PHYSICS‘While cell biology made

enormous progress in understanding the

structures and functions of many of the cell's subunits, it remained largely ignorant of the coordinating activities that integrate those operations into the

functioning of the cell as a whole.’

Fritjof Capra, The Turning point

The works of Einstein, Max Plank, Heisenberg and

David Bohm in wave mechanics have

emphasized the dual properties

of matter and energies.

Sheldrake’s MORPHOGENETIC FIELD

Rupert Sheldrake had observed:

"The instructors [at university] said that all morphogenesis is genetically programmed. They said different species just follow the instruction

in their genes. But a few moments' reflection show that this reply is inadequate. All the cells of the body contain the same genes. In your body, the same genetic program is present in your eye

cells, liver cells and the cells in your arms. The ones in your legs. But if they are all programmed identically, how do they develop so differently?"

Sheldrake’s MORPHOGENETIC FIELD

He developed a theory to explain this problem of morphology, with

its basic concept relying on a universal field encoding the "basic pattern" of an object.

He termed it the "morphogenetic

field".

DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY (EMBRYOLOGY)

The scientific vitalism found its major

proponent in the works of Hans Driesch.

In 1891, Driesch pinched a two-celled frog

embryo in half. To his utter astonishment, each cell developed into a fully normal frog, rather than a

half-frog.

Driesch proposed the emergence of parts in an organism is a result of internal interactions instead of an

assembly of preexisting parts, as in a mechanism or machine.

He described the ability of the embryo to develop normally even when some portions are removed or rearranged due to organising, formative force which directs the epigenesis of the

embryo as well as directing the conservation of the mature body.

The living being is not mere repository of isolated parts subject to mechanical or physical laws but is in itself a self regulating system. So self-organization is the very

essence of life……….

The basis of self organizing activities are not mechanico-chemical laws but ‘something beyond’………

(CECIL TEXTBOOK OF MEDICINE-VOL.1)

CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE

“This, then is my vision of what will happen to our scientific perception of disease

during the next century: we shall realize

the wisdom of the ancient Aristotelian approach to the study of nature, which means that we shall no longer regard disease as a ‘mechanical fault in the

human machine’ but as a disturbed life process.”

“We shall apply the theories of open systems and non-linear dynamics to

medical problems, and we shall reach a fuller understanding of the development

of disease.”

Wulff HR. The concept of disease: from Newton back to Aristotle. Lancet 1999;354(suppl):50S.

RELEVANCE of VITALISTIC VIEW

If the modern sciences have gradually accepted the concept of VITALISM in the

most subtle form, then as disciples of that great philanthropist, Samuel

Hahnemann , why do we and other ‘so called modernists’ have to be biased

against it just because it was promulgated by him long back ago, much

before the dawn of scientific era???

HAHNEMANN’S CONCEPT OF VITAL FORCE

‘Human life is in no respect regulated by purely physical laws, which only obtain among inorganic substances. The material substances of which the human body is composed no longer follow, in this vital combination, the laws to which material substances in the inanimate condition are

subject. They are regulated by the laws peculiar to vitality alone, they are themselves animated just

as the whole system is animated. Here a nameless fundamental power reigns omnipotent, which

suspends all the tendency of the component parts to obey the laws of gravitation, of momentum, of the vis inertiae, of fermentation, of putrefaction &

c., and brings them under the wonderful laws of life alone,………….’

“Spirit of the Homoeopathic Doctrine of Medicine”

HAHNEMANNIAN VIEW

“…………The organism is indeed the material instrument of the life, but it is not

conceivable without the animation imparted to it by the instinctively perceiving and

regulating vital force (just as the vital force is not conceivable without the organism),

consequently the two together constitute a unity, although in thought our mind separates this unity into two distinct

conceptions for the sake of facilitating the comprehension of it.”

§ 15 – Organon of the Art of Healing

Michael Baum, British Professor of surgery, in Journal of Royal Society of Medicine.

‘What is non-science today may indeed become the

science of tomorrow, and with these thoughts in mind, the

complacencies of conventional school of

thought must be shaken.’