Towards a Biosemiotic Understanding of Potentization

Abstract

In this paper I demonstrate some of the ways in which semiotic biology enlivens questions surrounding homeopathy that have remained dormant within the biochemical framework. In the first section, I outline the process of potentization involved in preparing homeopathic remedies and explain its impossibility within the biophysical paradigm. I then distinguish potentization from dilution in light of the speculation, introduced by Samuel Hahnemann, that the succussion or “intimate mixing” of a solution awakens the dynamic power of natural substances. In the second section, I present the distinction maintained by biosemioticians between biology and chemistry and its inextricability from our understanding of open-ended evolvability and life as we know it. After outlining the rationale for studying living processes in terms of semiotics, I demonstrate the commensurability of this mode of inquiry with the study of potentization. In the third and final section, I provide an overview of the pivotal research conducted by Jacques Benveniste, focusing on the ways in which it brings the study of homeopathy into the discourse of biosemiotics. I then consider some of the implications raised by Benveniste's experiments, and present the many questions that his research raises as a concrete indication of the suitability of biosemiotics as a method for studying the otherwise mysterious mechanism of homeopathy.