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AN INTRODUCTION OF QUANTUM PHYSICS IN THE FIELD OF HOMOEOPATHY MEDICAL SCIENCE
Compiled by: DR.ANKIT SRIVASTAVA
(HOMOEOPATHIC PHYSICIAN)
Email add: [email protected]
1
An introduction of quantum physics in the field of homoeopathy medical science
By: Dr.Ankit Srivastava
Quantum physics is a fundamental part of
the history of modern physics. Quantum
mechanics' history, as it interlaces with the history
of quantum chemistry, began essentially with a
number of different scientific discoveries: the 1838
discovery of cathode rays by Michael faraday; the
1859–60 winter statement of the black-body
radiation problem by Gustav Kirchhoff; the 1877 suggestion by Ludwig
Boltzmann that the energy states of a physical system could be discrete; the
discovery of the photoelectric effect by Heinrich hertz in 1887; and the 1900
quantum hypothesis by Max Planck that any energy-radiating atomic system can
theoretically be divided into a number of discrete "energy elements" ε (epsilon)
such that each of these energy elements is proportional to the frequency ν with
which each of them individually radiate energy, as defined by the following formula:
where h is a numerical value called Planck's
constant.
2
Then, Albert Einstein in 1905, in order to explain the photoelectric
effect previously reported by Heinrich Hertz in 1887, postulated consistently
with Max Planck's quantum hypothesis that light itself is made of individual
quantum particles, which in 1926 came to be called photons by Gilbert N. Lewis.
The photoelectric effect was observed upon shining light of particular
wavelengths on certain materials, such as metals, which caused electrons to be
ejected from those materials only if the light quantum energy was greater than
the work function of the metal's surface.
The phrase "quantum mechanics" was coined (in German, Quantenmechanik)
by the group of physicists including Max Born, Werner Heisenberg,
and Wolfgang Pauli, at the University of Göttingen in the early 1920s, and was
first used in Born's 1924 paper "Zur Quantenmechanik".[1] In the years to follow,
this theoretical basis slowly began to be applied to chemical structure, reactivity,
and bonding.
Ludwig Boltzmann's diagram of the I2 molecule proposed in 1898 showing the
atomic "sensitive region" (α, β) of overlap.
Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann suggested in 1877 that the energy levels of a physical
system, such as a molecule, could be discrete. He was a founder of the Austrian
Mathematical Society, together with the mathematicians Gustav von
3
Escherich and Emil Müller. Boltzmann's rationale for the presence of discrete
energy levels in molecules such as those of iodine gas had its origins in
his statistical thermodynamics and statistical mechanics theories and was backed
up by mathematical arguments, as would also be the case twenty years later with
the first quantum theory put forward by Max Planck.
In 1900, the German physicist Max Planck reluctantly introduced the idea that
energy is quantized in order to derive a formula for the observed frequency
dependence of the energy emitted by a black body, called Planck's Law, that
included a Boltzmann distribution (applicable in the classical limit). Planck's
law can be stated as
o I(ν,T) is the energy per unit time (or the power) radiated per unit area
of emitting surface in the normaldirection per unit solid angle per
unit frequency by a black body at temperature T;
o h is the Planck constant;
o c is the speed of light in a vacuum;
o k is the Boltzmann constant;
o ν is the frequency of the electromagnetic radiation; and
o T is the temperature of the body in kelvins.
The earlier Wien approximation may be derived from Planck's law by
assuming .
Moreover, the application of Planck's quantum theory to the electron
allowed Ștefan Procopiu in 1911–1913, and subsequently Niels Bohr in 1913, to
4
calculate the magnetic moment of the electron, which was later called the
"magneton"; similar quantum computations, but with numerically quite different
values, were subsequently made possible for both the magnetic moments of
the proton and the neutron that are three orders of magnitude smaller than that of
the electron.
In 1905, Einstein explained the photoelectric effect by postulating that light, or more
generally all electromagnetic radiation, can be divided into a finite number of
"energy quanta" that are localized points in space. From the introduction section of
his March 1905 quantum paper, "On a heuristic viewpoint concerning the emission
and transformation of light", Einstein states:
"According to the assumption to be contemplated here, when a light ray is
spreading from a point, the energy is not distributed continuously over ever-
increasing spaces, but consists of a finite number of 'energy quanta' that are
localized in points in space, move without dividing, and can be absorbed or
generated only as a whole."
This statement has been called the most revolutionary sentence written by a
physicist of the twentieth century these energy quanta later came to be called
"photons", a term introduced by Gilbert N. Lewis in 1926. The idea that each
photon had to consist of energy in terms of quanta was a remarkable achievement;
it effectively solved the problem of black-body radiation attaining infinite energy,
which occurred in theory if light were to be explained only in terms of waves. In
1913, Bohr explained the spectral lines of the hydrogen atom, again by using.
quantization, in his paper of July 1913 On the Constitution of Atoms and Molecules.
5
These theories, though successful, were strictly phenomenological: during this time,
there was no rigorous justification for quantization, aside, perhaps, from Henri
Poincaré's discussion of Planck's theory in his 1912 paper Sur la théorie des
quanta. They are collectively known as the old quantum theory.
The phrase "quantum physics" was first used in Johnston's Planck's Universe in
Light of Modern Physics (1931).
With decreasing temperature, the peak of
Photoelectric effect
The emission of electrons from a metal plate caused by light quanta (photons) with energy greater than the work function of the
metal.
The photoelectric effect reported by Heinrich Hertz in 1887,
and explained by Albert Einstein in 1905.
Low-energy phenomena: Photoelectric effect
Mid-energy phenomena: Compton scattering
High-energy phenomena: Pair production
6
The blackbody radiation curve shifts to longer wavelengths and also has lower
intensities. The blackbody radiation curves (1862) at left are also compared with the
early, classical limit model of Rayleigh and Jeans(1900) shown at right. The short
wavelength side of the curves was already approximated in 1896 by the Wien
distribution law.
Niels Bohr's 1913 quantum model of the atom, which incorporated an explanation
of Johannes Rydberg's 1888 formula, Max Planck's 1900 quantum hypothesis, i.e.
that atomic energy radiators have discrete energy values (ε = hν), J. J. Thomson's
1904plum pudding model, Albert Einstein's 1905light quanta postulate, and Ernest
Rutherford's 1907 discovery of the atomic nucleus. Note that the electron does not
travel along the black line when emitting a photon. It jumps, disappearing from the
outer orbit and appearing in the inner one and cannot exist in the space between
orbits 2 and 3.
In 1923, the French physicist Louis de Broglie put forward his theory of matter
waves by stating that particles can exhibit wave characteristics and vice versa. This
theory was for a single particle and derived from special relativity theory. Building
on de Broglie's approach, modern quantum mechanics was born in 1925, when the
German physicists Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, and Pascual
Jordan developed matrix mechanics and the Austrian physicist Erwin
7
Schrödinger invented wave mechanics and the non-relativistic Schrödinger equation
as an approximation to the generalized case of de Broglie's theory. Schrödinger
subsequently showed that the two approaches were equivalent.
Heisenberg formulated his uncertainty principle in 1927, and the Copenhagen
interpretation started to take shape at about the same time. Starting around
1927, Paul Dirac began the process of unifying quantum mechanics with special
relativity by proposing the Dirac equation for the electron. The Dirac equation
achieves the relativistic description of the wave function of an electron that
Schrödinger failed to obtain. It predicts electron spin and led Dirac to predict the
existence of the positron. He also pioneered the use of operator theory, including the
influential bracket notation, as described in his famous 1930 textbook. During the
same period, Hungarian polymath John von Neumann formulated the rigorous
mathematical basis for quantum mechanics as the theory of linear operators on
Hilbert spaces, as described in his likewise famous 1932 textbook. These, like many
other works from the founding period, still stand, and remain widely used.
The field of quantum chemistry was pioneered by physicists Walter
Heitler and Fritz London, who published a study of the covalent bond of
the hydrogen molecule in 1927. Quantum chemistry was subsequently developed by
a large number of workers, including the American theoretical chemist Linus
Pauling at Caltech, and John C. Slater into various theories such as Molecular
Orbital Theory or Valence Theory.
Beginning in 1927, researchers made attempts at applying quantum mechanics to
fields instead of single particles, resulting in quantum field theories. Early workers
in this area include P.A.M. Dirac, W. Pauli, V. Weisskopf, and P. Jordan. This area
of research culminated in the formulation of quantum electrodynamics by R.P.
Feynman, F. Dyson, J. Schwinger, and S.I. Tomonaga during the 1940s. Quantum
electrodynamics describes a quantum theory of electrons, positrons, and
8
the electromagnetic field, and served as a model for subsequent quantum field
theories.
The theory of quantum chromodynamics was formulated beginning in the early
1960s.
The theory as we know it today was formulated by Politzer, Gross and Wilczek in
1975. Building on pioneering work by Schwinger, Higgs and Goldstone, the
physicists Glashow, Weinberg and Salam independently showed how the weak
nuclear force and quantum electrodynamics could be merged into a
single electroweak force, for which they received the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics.
9
Particles discovered 1898 - 1964:
In homeopathy, homeopathic dilution (known by practitioners as "dynamisation"
or "potentisation") is a process in which a substance is diluted with alcohol
or distilled water and then vigorously shaken in a process called "succussion".
Insoluble solids, such as quartz and oyster shell, are diluted by grinding them
with lactose (trituration). The founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann(1755–
1843) believed that the process of succussion activated the "vital energy" of the
diluted substance, and that successive dilutions increased the "potency" of the
preparation, although other strands of homeopathy disagree.
Potency scales:
Several potency scales are in use in homeopathy. Hahnemann created the centesimal
or "C scale", diluting a substance by a factor of 100 at each stage. The centesimal
scale was favored by Hahnemann for most of his life. A 2C dilution requires a
10
substance to be diluted to one part in one hundred, and then some of that diluted
solution diluted by a further factor of one hundred. This works out to one part of
the original substance in 10,000 parts of the solution. A 6C dilution repeats this
process six times, ending up with the original material diluted by a factor of
100−6=10−12. Higher dilutions follow the same pattern. In homeopathy, a solution
that is more dilute is described as having a higher potency, and more dilute
substances are considered by homeopaths to be stronger and deeper-acting. The end
product is often so diluted that it is indistinguishable from the dilutant (pure water,
sugar or alcohol.
Hahnemann advocated 30C dilutions for most purposes (that is, dilution by a factor
of 1060). In Hahnemann's time it was reasonable to assume that preparations could
be diluted indefinitely, as the concept of the atom or molecule as the smallest
possible unit of a chemical substance was just beginning to be recognized. We now
know that the greatest dilution that is reasonably likely to contain one molecule of
the original substance is 12C, if starting from 1 mole of original substance.
Some homeopaths developed a decimal scale (D or X), diluting the substance to ten
times its original volume each stage. The D or X scale dilution is therefore half that
of the same value of the C scale; for example, "12X" is the same level of dilution as
"6C". Hahnemann never used this scale but it was very popular throughout the
19th century and still is in Europe. This potency scale appears to have been
introduced in the 1830s by the American homeopath Constantine Hering. In the last
ten years of his life, Hahnemann also developed a quinta millesimal (Q) or LM scale
diluting the drug 1 part in 50,000 parts of diluent. A given dilution on the Q scale is
roughly 2.35 times its designation on the C scale. For example a preparation
described as "20Q" has about the same concentration as one described with
"47C"g.
11
Potencies of 1000c and above are usually labelled with Roman numeral M and with
the centesimal 'c' indicator implied (since all such high potencies are centesimal
dilutions): 1M = 1000c; 10M = 10,000c; CM = 100,000c; LM (which would indicate
50,000c) is typically not used due to confusion with the LM potency scale.
The following table is a synopsis comparing the X and C dilution scales and
equating them by equivalent dilution. However, the homeopathic understanding of
its principles is not explained by dilution but by "potentisation", hence one cannot
assume that the different potencies can be equated based on equivalence of dilution
factors.
X
Scale
C
Scale Ratio Note
1X ― 1:10 described as low potency
2X 1C 1:100 called higher potency than 1X by homeopaths
6X 3C 10−6
8X 4C 10−8 allowable concentration of arsenic in U.S. drinking water[11]
12X 6C 10−12
24X 12C 10−24 Has a 60% probability of containing one molecule of original material if
one mole of the original substance was used.
26X 13C 10−26 If pure water was used as the diluent, no molecules of the original solution
remain in the water.
12
60X 30C 10−60
Dilution advocated by Hahnemann for most purposes: on average, this would
require giving two billion doses per second to six billion people for 4 billion
years to deliver a single molecule of the original material to any patient.
400X 200C 10−400 Dilution of popular homeopathic flu preparation Oscillococcinum
Note: the "X scale" is also called "D scale". 1X = 1D, 2X = 2D, etc.
The old quantum theory
Although the ideas of Planck did not take the world by storm, they did develop a
growing following and were applied to more and more situations. The resulting
ideas, now called "old quantum theory", were all of the same type: Classical
mechanics was assumed to hold, but with the additional assumption that only
certain values of a physical quantity (the energy, say, or the projection of a magnetic
arrow) were allowed. Any such quantity was said to be "quantized". The trick
seemed to be to guess the right quantization rules for the situation under study, or to
find a general set of quantization rules that would work for all situations.
For example, in 1905 Albert Einstein (age 26) postulated that the total energy of a
beam of light is quantized. Just one year later he used quantization ideas to explain
the heat/temperature puzzle for diatomic gases. Five years after that, in 1911,
Arnold Sommerfeld (age 43) at Munich began working on the implications of energy
quantization for position and speed.
In the same year Ernest Rutherford (age 40), a New Zealander doing experiments in
Manchester, England, discovered the atomic nucleus -- only at this relatively late
stage in the development of quantum mechanics did physicists have even a
13
qualitatively correct picture of the atom! In 1913, Niels Bohr (age 28), a Dane who
had recently worked in Rutherford's laboratory, introduced quantization ideas for
the hydrogen atom. His theory was remarkably successful in explaining the colors
emitted by hydrogen glowing in a discharge tube, and it sparked enormous interest
in developing and extending the old quantum theory.
This development was hindered but not halted completely by the start of the First
World War in 1914. During the war (in 1915) William Wilson (age 40, a native of
Cumberland, England, working at King's College in London) made progress on the
implications of energy quantization for position and speed, and Sommerfeld also
continued his work in that direction.
With the coming of the armistice in 1918, work in quantum mechanics expanded
rapidly. Many theories were suggested and many experiments performed. To cite
just one example, in 1922 Otto Stern and his graduate student Walther Gerlach
(ages 34 and 23) performed their important experiment that is so essential to the
way this book presents quantum mechanics. Jagdish Mehra and Helmut
Rechenberg, in their monumental history of quantum mechanics, describe the
situation at this juncture well:
At the turn of the year from 1922 to 1923, the physicists
looked forward with enormous enthusiasm towards detailed
solutions of the outstanding problems, such as the helium
problem and the problem of the anomalous Zeeman effects.
However, within less than a year, the investigation of these
problems revealed an almost complete failure of Bohr's
atomic theory.
14
The matrix formulation of quantum mechanics
As more and more situations were encountered, more and more recipes for allowed
values were required. This development took place mostly at Niels Bohr's Institute
for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen, and at the University of Göttingen in
northern Germany. The most important actors at Göttingen were Max Born (age
43, an established professor) and Werner Heisenberg (age 23, a freshly minted Ph.D.
from Sommerfeld in Munich). According to Born "At Göttingen we also took part
in the attempts to distill the unknown mechanics of the atom out of the experimental
results. . . . The art of guessing correct formulas . . . was brought to considerable
perfection."
Heisenberg particularly was interested in general methods for making guesses. He
began to develop systematic tables of allowed physical quantities, be they energies,
or positions, or speeds. Born looked at these tables and saw that they could be
interpreted as mathematical matrices. Fifty years later matrix mathematics would
be taught even in high schools. But in 1925 it was an advanced and abstract
technique, and Heisenberg struggled with it. His work was cut short in June 1925.
It was late spring in Göttingen, and Heisenberg suffered from an allergy attack so
severe that he could hardly work. He asked his research director, Max Born, for a
vacation, and spent it on the rocky North Sea island of Helgoland. At first he was so
ill that could only stay in his rented room and admire the view of the sea. As his
condition improved he began to take walks and to swim. With further improvement
he began also to read Goethe and to work on physics. With nothing to distract him,
he concentrated intensely on the problems that had faced him in Göttingen.
Heisenberg reproduced his earlier work, cleaning up the mathematics and
simplifying the formulation. He worried that the mathematical scheme he invented
15
might prove to be inconsistent, and in particular that it might violate the principle
of the conservation of energy. In Heisenberg's own words:
One evening I reached the point where I was ready to
determine the individual terms in the energy table, or, as we
put it today, in the energy matrix, by what would now be
considered an extremely clumsy series of calculations. When
the first terms seemed to accord with the energy principle, I
became rather excited, and I began to make countless
arithmetical errors. As a result, it was almost three o'clock
in the morning before the final result of my computations lay
before me. The energy principle had held for all the terms,
and I could no longer doubt the mathematical consistency
and coherence of the kind of quantum mechanics to which
my calculations pointed. At first, I was deeply alarmed. I had
the feeling that, through the surface of atomic phenomena, I
was looking at a strangely beautiful interior, and felt almost
giddy at the thought that I now had to probe this wealth of
mathematical structures nature had so generously spread
out before me. I was far too excited to sleep, and so, as a
new day dawned, I made for the southern tip of the island,
where I had been longing to climb a rock jutting out into the
sea. I now did so without too much trouble, and waited for
the sun to rise.
By the end of the summer Heisenberg, Born, and Pascual Jordan (age 22) had
developed a complete and consistent theory of quantum mechanics. (Jordan had
entered the collaboration when he overheard Born discussing quantum mechanics
with a colleague on a train.)
This theory, called "matrix mechanics" or "the matrix formulation of quantum
mechanics", is not the theory I have presented in this book. It is extremely and
intrinsically mathematical, and even for master mathematicians it was difficult to
work with. Although we now know it to be complete and consistent, this wasn't clear
until much later. Heisenberg had been keeping Wolfgang Pauli apprised of his
progress. (Pauli, age 25, was Heisenberg's friend from graduate student days, when
they studied together under Sommerfeld.) Pauli found the work too mathematical
16
for his tastes, and called it "Göttingen's deluge of formal learning". On 12 October
1925 Heisenberg could stand Pauli's biting criticism no longer. He wrote to Pauli:
With respect to both of your last letters I must preach you a
sermon, and beg your pardon for proceeding in Bavarian: It
is really a pigsty that you cannot stop indulging in a
slanging match. Your eternal reviling of Copenhagen and
Göttingen is a shrieking scandal. You will have to allow that,
in any case, we are not seeking to ruin physics out of
malicious intent. When you reproach us that we are such big
donkeys that we have never produced anything new in
physics, it may well be true. But then, you are also an
equally big jackass because you have not accomplished it
either . . . . . . (The dots denote a curse of about two-minute
duration!) Do not think badly of me and many greetings.
The wavefunction formulation of quantum
mechanics
While this work was going on at Göttingen and Helgoland, others were busy as well.
In 1923 Louis de Broglie (age 31), associated an "internal periodic phenomenon" --
a wave -- with a particle. He was never very precise about just what that meant. (De
Broglie is sometimes called "Prince de Broglie" because his family descended from
the French nobility. To be strictly correct, however, only his eldest brother could
claim the title.)
It fell to Erwin Schr&oum;ldinger, an Austrian working in Zürich, to build this
vague idea into a theory of wave mechanics. He did so during the Christmas season
of 1925 (at age 38), at the alpine resort of Arosa, Switzerland, in the company of "an
old girlfriend [from] Vienna", while his wife stayed home in Zürich.
In short, just twenty-five years after Planck glimpsed the first sight of a new physics,
there was not one, but two competing versions of that new physics! The two versions
17
seemed utterly different and there was an acrimonious debate over which one was
correct. In a footnote to a 1926 paper Schrödinger claimed to be "discouraged, if not
repelled" by matrix mechanics. Meanwhile, Heisenberg wrote to Pauli (8 June 1926)
that
The more I think of the physical part of the Schrödinger
theory, the more detestable I find it. What Schrödinger
writes about visualization makes scarcely any sense, in other
words I think it is shit. The greatest result of his theory is the
calculation of matrix elements.
Fortunately the debate was soon stilled: in 1926 Schrödinger and, independently,
Carl Eckert (age 24) of Caltech proved that the two new mechanics, although very
different in superficial appearance, were equivalent to each other. [Very much as
the process of adding arabic numerals is quite different from the process of adding
roman numerals, but the two processes nevertheless always give the same result.]
(Pauli also proved this, but never published the result.)
On the basis of report published in conference basic
research in homeopathy and ultra-high dilutions: what
progress is being made?
Report summarises the latest research developments in the field of high dilutions
and homeopathy, as presented at the giri symposium of the leading international
organization Of scientists in this field, in florence, italy in september 2012. The
scientific community’s Early scepticism concerning the possible biological and
pharmacological Activity of highly diluted solutions, is giving way to a more open-
minded attitude that No longer obstructs critical and experimental investigations in
this emerging field of Biomedicine.
the international basic research being done in this field revolves around three
18
main topic areas: 1) physicochemical properties of UHD and role of dynamisation,
2) homeopathy and plants in vitro, in planta and field studies, 3) other laboratory
methods.
The results obtained from the three different experimental protocols all share the
common element of a variation in the supra molecular structure of the water
solvent, allowing them all to be attributed to a single working hypothesis: the
formation of dissipative structures.
This hypothesis is based on the fact that water is a complex liquid capable of self-
organising in response to mechanical and/or electromagnetic perturbations even of
slight magnitude, to form aqueous nanostructures. In the liquid phase, these
structures are capable of remaining in a far-from-equilibrium state by dissipating
radiant energy drawn from the environment, while in the solid phase (after the
associated water is removed by evaporation) they can indefinitely retain their
properties without dissipating.
When a sufficient amount of water becomes available, such nanostructures can
exploit radiant energy from the environment to return to their preceding state. The
existence of aqueous nanostructures in the solid phase at ambient temperature and
pressure is a novel and entirely unexpected phenomenon, which is however
encountered on a daily basis in clinical practice: whenever homeopathic globules are
dissolved in the patient’s mouth. the aggregates revert to the liquid phase,
recovering their ability to dissipate radiant energy, remaining in a far-from
equilibrium state. In this condition, they are able to exert their therapeutic action as
dissipative structures.
The physicochemical properties of UHDs have been further analysed by other
methods: UV spectroscopy appears to be better suited for investigating homeopathic
preparations than visible spectrum or near-infrared spectroscopy.
19
The crystallogenesis of organic liquids can become a valid diagnostic tool in
homeopathy and the droplet crystallisation method, presented here for the first
time, can yield eloquent images highlighting the efficacy of UHDs, applied in this
case to stressed wheat seeds. It has also been suggested that UHDs might share a
common epigenetic mechanism with EMIT (Electro Magnetic Information
Transfer): water aggregates with an electric dipole moment might act as mediators
of specific weak bio-electromagnetic signals on target stem cells, altering their
proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis or adaptive responses. The concluding paper
of the session summarized the current state of knowledge concerning the
‘homeopathic phenomenon’.