Nowadays I'm looking at Homepathy from a post-structuralist point of view - Michel Foucault used the term épistémè to describe "the historical a priori that grounds knowledge within a particular epoch". It's wider than the idea of a paradigm, in that it includes fundamental assumptions and attitudes that are almost invisible to the people operating within its limits - a sort of 'epistemological unconscious' of an era.
Scholten, as a philosopher and scientist is introducing ideas that are, at the moment, beyond the épistémè of Classical Homeopathy. More specifically, the main difference is that his approach is nomothetic, that is, he identifies, classifies and maps the universal and common characteristics shared by everyone into logical dimensions, whereas classical Homeopathy is strongly ideographic, focusing entirely on the unique aspects of the individual, and any attempt at "chunking up" to see the big picture is still an anathema to many.
In fact each approach has its own advantages, which becomes clear when we compare the overlap and variation within the DSM categoires with the "Big Five" (Costa & McCrea, 2007), a statistical model of personality derived from factor analysis. The synonym clusters (of symptoms) used in the Plants Project (this author,2008) were derived through this methodology.
Historically, Dr. Rajan Sankarn, by sheer force of logic and personality challenged this ideographic approach in the 90's and opened the way for some of us to think about the relationshps of states and remedies with a more scientific person centered approach.
Scholtens amazing work on the 'Series' of the periodic table explores the pathology and the prognosis of the more materialistic first tier vMemes, and even more significantly, his examination of the Lanthanides explores the inner spiritual development and the autonomy of the second tier. [Ref: Spiral Dynamics]
Hope you enjoy exploring this with me - and leave a few comments!
Warmly,
Steph.
*epistemology = study of the nature of knowledge.
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