Theos-Talk Archives (July 2004 Message tt00083)

Dallas TenBroeck wrote:
> "I was reading his origination's about "Water Memory" more properly 
> called "High Dilution Phenomena," he supported Benveniste's findings."
>
> What are these ? Help?
It's a theory that is a reverse-logic explanation of homeopathy. It 
posits that, if a substance is dissolved in water and removed from it, 
there is a difference between that water and water in which the 
substance was not dissolved (in other words, water retains traces, or a 
"memory" of substances that have been dissolved in it). Experiments to 
determine whether or not this is so have been inconclusive or 
non-replicable (this does not mean that it isn't true; merely that it 
hasn't been proven).

It brings up an interesting point in the Western view of science, 
however. One way of dividing science is "utilitarian" and "causative". 
"Utilitarian" science can be summarized as: If action A is performed 
under condition B, then phenomenon C will result. It has been the 
traditional form of science practiced. During the Renaissance in Europe, 
however, the idea was developed that it would be useful to find basic 
principles of science, so that results can be reliably predicted rather 
than just found by trial and error. This is very useful, in that it can 
be used to predict areas where experimentation would prove useful. 
However, its very usefulness has had the opposite effect, in that 
utilitarian science has been minimized.

To be more precise, in the minds of many, it is not enough to know that 
A under B yields C; if there is no theory WHY it happens, that somehow 
invalidates THAT it happens (note that this is philosophy of science, 
NOT science). This sometimes leads to two unfortunate results:

1) People working with phenomena which are not well-defined and/or 
well-measured feel obligated to come up with causes for these phenomena. 
These causes can, at best, be called hypotheses, and, more often, are 
simply guesses, yet are too often labeled "theories".

2) Others link the hypotheses with the phenomena, coming to the 
conclusion that if the hypothesis is disproven, then the phenomena do 
not exist.

This has happened with Therapeutic Touch (where experiments which fail 
to show that practitioners can detect "human energy fields" are 
misinterpreted as disproof of Therapeutic Touch), and, in the examples 
being given, with homeopathy (where failure to demonstrate "water 
memory" somehow invalidates homeopathy). I discussed this with James 
Randi about a year or two ago, and got a statement from him that he 
agreed that disproving a so-called theory behind a phenomenon is not the 
same thing as disproving the phenomenon (the main thrust of the 
discussions I have had with him in the past few years, is the creation 
of "self-test" methodologies for people interested in the million dollar 
JREF prize).

Bart