Vital
Force in Homeopathy
[Konstantinos Pisios]
Dr. Konstantinos Pisios shares his views on the term “vital
force”, exploring the terms used by Van Helmont, Stahl, Bartez and the Greek
philosophers.
All homeopaths talk about is “vital force”. They consider it
responsible for the disease and the return to health. But is it force? If it is
not, should we continue to call it “force”
or should we change the term to something else. What does it really
represent? The term “vital force” is
taught to all those studying at homeopathic schools. It is attributed to
Hahnemann who used it in his book “Organon”. But is it a creation of Hahnemann?
Let’s start first with what Hahnemann means by the term “vital force”. In Aphorism
11 he writes:
“…it is only the vital force, deranged to such an abnormal state,
that can furnish the organism with its disagreeable sensations”.
From this we find that Hahnemann believed that “vital force” is
what causes the symptoms.
Let’s look at Aphorism 12:
“It is the morbidly affected vital energy alone that produces
disease, so that the morbid phenomena perceptible to our senses expressed at
the same time all the internal change,
that is to say, the whole morbid derangement of the internal dynamis; in
a word, they reveal the whole disease”. He writes that the vital force, when it
is affected, is what causes
the disease, that is, the cause of the disease. Are these wordings
Hahnemann’s original ideas or are they taken from someone else?
If you read Van Helmont (12. Januar 1580 - 30. Dezember
1644) or Stahl (21. oder 22. Oktober 1659 in Ansbach - 14. Mai 1734) you will see that they too were
saying the same things a few hundred years ago. There is “something” that if it
works harmoniously keeps the human healthy and when it is disturbed it causes
illness. The first named it “archeus” while the second called it “anima”. Also,
the Vitalists, led by P. Bartez, considered that all animal phenomena are the
effects of the action of an internal force, a vital principle that does not
exist outside the organic living bodies. This creates all the vital functions
of living organisms and called it “vis vitalis” from the Latin, “vita” meaning
“life”.
If you go even further back, you will find that Aristotle,
Hippocrates, and generally all ancient Greeks considered the existence of a
“something” that if it functioned harmoniously maintained health, while its
disorder caused symptoms, i.e. sickness.
The first who seem to have talked about the existence of this
“thing” were the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers. They called it
“dynamis”. Aristotle then calls it “life
dynamis” because he considered that “something” is a trait of living organisms
only.As can be seen from the above, the “vital force” or “dynamis” as mentioned
by Hahnemann is merely
a paraphrase of the term “life dynamis” of the ancient Greeks and has
the same explanation.
Although Hahnemann does not
mention the ancient Greeks in his books, except for Galen, it is impossible for
him not to have read Hippocrates and generally ancient Greek texts. From many
biographies about his life we know that Hahnemann spoke several languages,
including ancient Greek and Latin. He learnt ancient Greek and then worked as a
translator for Greek and Latin medical books. Thus, although he has never said
that he has received this knowledge from the ancient Greeks, nor did he
nominally mention any of the Greek physicians, it is obvious that he has been
deeply affected by them, since he uses the principles, concepts, descriptions
and methods of practice from the ancient Greek knowledge. Even at the
university that he went to, ancient Greek medicine was taught from the Greek
and Latin texts, so it was impossible not to read the terms and definitions
given by the ancient Greeks. From all this, we conclude that Hahnemann used the
term “life dynamis”, paraphrasing it to “vital force”, with the same qualities
as the ancient Greeks gave to it.
While in his
first books he uses the term “vital force”, in the 5th edition of “Organon” he
changes the term and calls it a “vital principle”. Towards the end of his life,
in the 6th and
the last version he changes it again
using the term “life principle”. So he himself found that the name “vital
force” was not fully covered. Why was that and why are modern
homeopaths taught to use the term
“vital force”?
Let us analyze the term “vital force” to see if it fits based on
the explanation given to us in the definition.
“Vital” means “necessary for life”. “Force” is “the cause of any change
in motion or geometry of bodies “. If something makes an object move, that is
force. If something makes an object change its shape that is a force. Hahneman
used the word “force” for “dynamis”. In Ancient Greece, however, when they used
the term “dynamis” they meant something different. Aristotle writes “Dynamis is
the principle of a change of one in another”.
“Dynamis” meant “the intelligence or mood of a thing that is able to be
and not to be that or the other”. In other words it’s the potential of a thing
to be or not to be. If we apply it to a living organism then “dynamis” is “the
potentiality of an organism to change some of its own qualities.” So the
ancient Greeks with the word “dynamis” did not mean the “force” we mean today.
The finding that “vital force” is not right as a term has been understood by
other homeopaths too, who tried to explain it with today’s terms. Some of them
think that it is the “soul”, the “spirit”. Some others conclude that “force” is
an energy. So “vital force” is the “energy of life”. Is this term
representative for “vital force”?
If we look in dictionaries what the term “energy” means, we will
find many different things.
Energy is the ability of
a body or system to produce work.
Energy is the power and
vitality required for sustained physical or mental activity.
Energy is the power that comes
from the use of natural or chemical resources, especially for the supply of
light and heat or for machine work, e.g. nuclear energy
Energy is the property of
matter and radiation that manifests itself as an ability to perform work (such
as causing movement or interaction of molecules).
There are different types of energy:
thermal
chemical
kinetic
mechanical
electrical
gravitational
nuclear
light
sound
magnetical
All these energies have some properties. One of these is the
change according to external stimuli. However “vital force” has some more
qualities than “common energies”. It can alter its reaction based on learning,
experience. Normal energies do not have this ability. They do not learn, they
just react to stimuli every time in the same way. For example, if you drop an
apple, the energy of gravity will do the same thing every time. It will not change the way the
apple falls. So the term “vital force” I would define as something different,
because it is influenced by some other functions that living beings have. A
person has the freedom to choose whether on a stimulus, e.g. he felt an insult,
he would hit or not hit the insulting person. This depends on his/ her
experience and learning. He may have reacted when he was younger by hitting the
insulting person. But then he found out that the other person might have been
stronger and hit him back worse. He may have learned that if he hits his boss
he will be fired by him so he does not do it because he fears that he will lose
his job. From this we understand that man has the potential to react as he
thinks best about himself.
I will give you another example to understand this better. A woman
has headaches after her husband shouts and she does not react even though she
feels lots of anger inside.
If she does psychotherapy and starts to get angry with her husband, the
reaction may be different to that stimulus, causing the headaches to decrease
or even disappear.
Here it seems that learning has changed the expression of “vital force”
because it has this potentiality.
Based on all that I have described above, I do not think it is
right to speak of “vital force,” “life energy,” but of “living potential.” The
definition of “living potential” seems to me
to be the following. “Living potential” of an organism is the potential
that has the means inherently, to alter its health and illness properties in
the mental and physical fields, depending on internal or external factors. All
forms that have life have a living potential. This living potential is
responsible for health and illness. Changes in living potential can cause
illness but also restore health.
As a conclusion I want to emphasize that the terms “vital power”,
“energy”, “spirit”, “soul”, etc. do not fit and all homeopaths should use the
term “living potential” to describe that “something” which causes illness to
every living being but can also restore
it to health. This is because if we want to call Homeopathy a science, everyone
should agree and understand exactly the
meaning of each term.
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