Re-validation of concept of vital force in light of modern sciences.

1. RELEVANCE OF CONCEPT OF
VITAL FORCE IN
LIGHT OF MODERN sciences
FROM
DR. ANJU JETHANI m.d. (hom.)
SENIOR MEDICAL OFFICER,
MEDICAL CENTER, HIGH COURT OF DELHI, DTE. OF AYUSH, GNCT OF DELHI
SENIOR LECTURER, DEPT. OF ORGANON OF MEDICINE, NHMC & HOSPITAL,
GOVT. OF NCT OF DELHI.
E-MAIL: DRANJUJETHANI@GMAIL.COM

2. 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 OR
VITALISTIC 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

3. 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??

4. 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.

5. 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’

6. 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.

7. ‘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

8. ‘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

9. 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.
……..George Ernst Stahl (1660-1734)

10. 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.

11. Acceptability of concept of vital
force in modern sciences??
• MODERN PHYSICS
• DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY
(EMBRYOLOGY)
• CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE

12. 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.

13. 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?"

14. 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".

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE
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)

18. “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.

19. 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???

20. 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”

21. 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

22. 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.’