Human, animal, plant and mineral

We rarely think about it, but the use and effectiveness of homeopathic strains testify to a very great intimacy between human beings, animals, plants and minerals.

Some modern authors explicitly link their clinical advances to this closeness. However, the link they evoke between the patient and the strain (or substance at the origin of the homeopathic medicine) remains, in my opinion, too allusive and intuitive. Too simply analogical to say the least.

I would like to point out here that it is possible to draw more objective links and to propose an initial scientific substantiation of these relations between patient and strain. This paves the way for an incredible, exciting and very broad field of research into the links that human beings have, from a scientific point of view, with the elements of the three kingdoms.

In this way, homeopathy could contribute to changing the scientific concept of the human being in a radical and revolutionary way.

It is surprising that, despite all the knowledge of human genealogy, of this long evolution that can be counted in billions of years, human sciences still consider it to be totally human, as essentially independent of the functioning of most animal species, unconnected with that of plant species and of a nature radically foreign to the mineral world.

Thus, it must be noted that our sciences have never really considered the possibility that pre-human structures present in humans could play a considerable role in their daily functioning. Moreover, modern medicine, unlike homeopathy, ignores the fact that it is possible to take into account these pre-human elements in the treatment of human beings.

Of course, one will refer to the knowledge of the three constituent layers of the human central nervous system with, in particular, the importance given to the reptilian brain. But this one is given only a basic, archaic role. It is not only a question of recognizing the persistence of some basic "animal" functions. Above all, this description does not lead to any effective and easy-to-use therapeutic proposal.

However, a homeopathy that is well understood, clearly conceptualized and firmly anchored in the field of biology and modern science, far from any esotericism and any facility for vague analogical comparisons, is capable of showing that basic functions are present everywhere and all the time in human beings, and that they are not only reptilian, but refer to fish, birds, insects, spiders, etc., and therefore to the entire animal kingdom. But also, what is even more surprising, to the vegetable and mineral universe.

Let us see, to begin with, how a brief overview of the history of our universe and the appearance and development of life supports my point.

Astrophysicists assume that the present Universe dates back some 15 billion years. At the inaugural moment of the Big Bang, "the temperature reached billions of billions of degrees... and in this incandescent bath, imperceptible grains of energy were formed: quarks. A second after the immense explosion, the nuclear force forms the nuclei of atoms.” It will then take a million years for the electromagnetic force to create the atoms. These first atoms will be made up of 90% hydrogen atoms and 8-9% helium atoms (these are the two simplest atoms, made up of only one nucleus with one or two protons and one and two peripheral electrons respectively). The remaining 1-2% are divided into about 100 different atoms, all in very small quantities.

Among the billions of galaxies created, ours is the Milky Way. Our sun was formed 5 billion years ago, nearly ten billion years later! Then, 4.6 billion years ago, our planet was formed. Depending on their proximity or distance from the sun, the planets gradually cool down. On Earth, water vapour condenses into rain and falls to the ground. This leads, about 4 billion years ago, to our planet being 70% covered with water.

About 3 billion 500 million years ago, the first cells (without a nucleus) are formed from mineral atoms. The main thing is that the first organic cells were formed from the inorganic molecules available at that time. The premises of what we call life emerged from a slow and complex organization of the inanimate, the inert.

2 billion years ago, the development of unicellular beings took place in aquatic environments (oceans and lakes). After 1.5 billion years, the first cells with nuclei (or eukaryotes) appeared. It should be noted, in passing, that the crucial acquisition of the nuclear membrane took twice as long (two billion years) as the passage from the inanimate to the animate (one billion years). This is very important because the development of the cell membrane will allow a large autonomy of the following living structures and a greater specialization of their functions and capacities.

The first cells unique to a nucleus are called protists. 70,000 different "species" of protists have been identified to date. They constitute the basic element, the foundation of all future plant and animal lines, the origin of all animals and plants. Here we can see the intimate kinship between the animal and the plant.

700 million years ago, the first pluri-cellulars appeared. This includes the sponge, for example, which cannot be classified as either animal or plant since it possesses properties of both kingdoms. In fact, it is the appearance of mobility that constitutes the main characteristic of animals. And it is this property of moving that will lead to the extreme apparent differentiation between animal and vegetable, even if a more nuanced and subtle look allows us, even today, to discern their intimate proximity. They are born on the bottom of the oceans in the form of animals without shells: worms, squid, octopus, cuttlefish. Others appear, then, with shells, the arthropods: they are tiny animals, without a spine but with a carapace and articulated feet. They are the aquatic ancestors of crabs, shrimps and crayfish. Other animals, resolutely terrestrial, appear; the ancestors of scorpions, spiders, thousand legs and all insects. Insects which, as we know too little about, still represent three quarters of the planet's animal species today, with 800,000 different species!

This evolution is accompanied by the development of the respiratory system with trachea and bronchial tubes. It should be noted that this is a kind of tree and that the pulmonary alveoli have a function very similar to the leaves of a plant for gas exchanges (with, just, inversion between the exchanges, O2 against CO2).

Then came the formation of vertebrates, of which there are now 50,000 different species. No less.

The appearance of terrestrial animals occurs from aquatic animals. These animals attempt an exit on land. Gradually their fins will turn into legs, and lungs will appear.

Around 430 million years ago, the transition from aquatic to terrestrial flora takes place. Structures with roots and leaves develop in order to "draw" from the earth and the sky the essential resources for their development. The roots draw the mineral salts necessary for life. The leaves receive light energy from the sun, which is necessary for the assimilation of mineral salts and the production of organic matter and oxygen. Earthly life, as we understand it today, is therefore completely derived from the sea.

360 million years ago, therefore, vertebrates passed from aquatic to terrestrial life. Amphibians, amphibians, batrachians, reptiles, birds, and later mammals appeared, and much later still, man finally appeared. It should be noted that it took more than 100 million years for aquatic life to adapt to aerial life, an adaptation that a frog larva now takes three weeks!

7 to 8 million years ago, the common ancestor of the three following species appeared among primates: gorilla, chimpanzee and Australopithecus. The ancestor of man is 2 million years old: homo habilis. From 2 million years ago to 35,000 years ago, the evolution of the hominians (homo habilis, erectus, sapiens neandertalis, and finally sapiens sapiens) occurred. 30,000 years ago, Cro magnon man appeared. The caves of Lascaux are painted 17,000 years ago. The sedentarisation of the species occurs 10 000 years ago.

The most important thing to retain from this brief overview of evolution is that there is remarkable continuity in nature as a whole. This formidable continuity does not only concern animal species, among themselves, and plant species, among themselves, but concerns the intimate kinship between animal and plant species and their affiliation from the mineral world!

How can we fail to understand, on reading this brief overview, that imagining a biology and functioning of the human being independent of other kingdoms is a matter of unbelievable naivety and bewildering anthropocentrism?

The human species is only a few tens of thousands of years old (in fact incredibly young) out of an evolution of fifteen billion years. How can we imagine that it has completely emancipated itself from all that preceded it?

The question to be asked is therefore whether the pre-human structures present in human beings are mere fossils, mere remains, archives, witnesses of an evolution that has made them totally obsolete, or whether they are fundamental and active in human beings, of primordial current importance?

It must be clearly seen here that the use of mineral, vegetable and animal substances in homeopathy, especially with the great depth of action that they demonstrate, is a sign of the great topicality and effectiveness of these pre-human elements in the biological and psychological functioning of the human being.

This is, moreover, what contemporary homeopathic medical practice amplifies and develops even more than more "traditional" homeopathy. Thus, homeopathy testifies to the major scientific and biological fact that human behaviour and the appearance of numerous pathologies are rooted in an astonishing closeness of human beings to animals, plants and minerals.

But is this so astonishing since we know that...

This is the moment to recall that, in a certain way, during its intrauterine development, the human embryo "accelerates" the extraordinarily slow process of hominization, passing through phases of development in which it presents gills, webbed hands and feet, old "memories", old traces, old "remains" of its aquatic ancestors.

But the most important thing to keep in mind is undoubtedly the fact that the new has always structured itself on the old, elaborated from the old, and has never completely broken with it. As the 1965 Nobel Prize winner for Physiology and Medicine François Jacob said, it was made by "tinkering" with the old.

Structurally, this is today widely accepted scientifically. But functionally?

The leap that the homeopathic clinic and therapeutic arsenal invites us to take is to adhere to the thesis that the human being has never functionally broken with his evolutionary genealogy. The most human, the most evolved functioning has been constantly elaborated from pre-human functioning always at work.

Indeed, all modern scientific knowledge bears witness to the fact that human beings are only one of the elements in "the immense chain of solidarity between the animal and plant worlds" and that we too are "dependent on the nitrogen, carbon and oxygen cycles, and therefore on the providential photosynthesis placed under the protection of the sun.”

Everything thus indicates that nothing in man is so original, nor so specific in itself. That human specificity is not what we believe. Above all, that the human being's connection to the totality of the universe is a striking and essential fact, as many great traditions of thought have always evoked and thought. Only the degree of complexity of the organization of its elements and structures differs.

It seems, therefore, that the very slow process of evolution has, admittedly, silenced certain archaic structures in human beings, but has “integrated” others into its “human” functioning.

The new has never erased the old, but has always relied on it, or even "grafted" on it. Humans have therefore never completely erased the animal, plant and mineral since, for example, the mammal has not completely broken away from the reptile or the fish. The animal, itself, has not broken with the plant, and animals and plants, both of which are descended from common unicellular ancestors, are, in the final analysis, made up only of inorganic matter, which forms the basis of organic matter.

The links that homeopathy emphasizes between human beings and animals, between human beings and plants and between human beings and minerals, links on which it bases its increasingly effective practice, thus testify in favour of the existence of human functioning largely based on pre-human structures present in man.

Moreover, on reflection, it is the opposite that would be astonishing. The astonishing, the illogical, would be that so much closeness, so much intimacy never expresses itself, never manifests itself, at the functional and behavioural level, in any "visible" way. The astonishing, the unbelievable, would be that such an intimate underpinning of the human on the pre-human has led to a "purely" human functioning leaving no "trace" of pre-human functioning.

Homeopathy thus testifies to the permanent functioning of these structures and functions within the very heart of the most "human" functions and behaviours.

Several billion years of biological evolution have therefore left their traces and foundations in man. The human being is the fruit of an evolution that is very largely pre-human or non-human. It therefore constitutes a sort of genetic patchwork and has been built on reptilian elements, is related to birds and fish (since it is from fish that came out of the water over millions of years that land animals appeared), etc. But these animals are themselves derived from algae, themselves derived from anorganic molecules, and so on.

This genetic proximity, this sharing, in addition, of so many homotetic molecules, so many common proteins, shared enzymes, etc., is such that one would have to be very naive to imagine that this entire submerged part of the human iceberg has led to "purely" human behaviour, sensations, environmental and inter-subjective relations, without any detectable link or proximity to animal or plant behaviour, sensations, relations, etc., and that these are all "purely" human.

It is therefore logical that the human being is crossed by pre-human issues. If we can only underline the fantastic clinical work carried out by the great contemporary homeopaths, it is essential not to let these advances be linked either to old concepts that are more or less anachronistic, even "esoteric", to "justify" their work, or to be satisfied with simple analogical comparisons between the patient and this or that strain, not because such comparisons are necessarily uninteresting or false but because they are too poor and because they open to significant risks of drift.

What I propose, and what I invite homeopathy to do is to draw on the biological genealogy of the human being as a basis for such comparisons.

Let us say it at the outset: there is nothing magical or esoteric about the pre-human dimension present in every human being. It is not a simple analogy but is rooted in the genetics of evolution and the biological "tinkering" that evolution has used to create human beings. “Tinkering” with the same to make analogic structures or functions.

Homeopathy thus shows that the presence of certain animal, plant or mineral traits in human behaviour is not esoteric, nor is it based on a "poetic" vision of things, but rather on the current and living presence in each human being of fundamental structures inherited from the evolution of the living world.

A fundamental, archaic, pre-human experience is thus at the very foundation of the human being. Better still, it is constitutive of the human being. It is the immense, greatest part that we share with the rest of the universe. By which we can become aware of...

The homeopathic clinic and a reflection (to be deepened further on) on its relationship to its therapeutic arsenal thus clearly teach that pre-human structures in the human being are not limited to the animal structures of the closest species. They include the entire spectrum of the animal kingdom. They also include many plant aspects (relationship to the ecosystem in the register of general modalities in particular), as well as characteristics, lines of force, orientations largely derived from the properties and characteristics of the elements of the mineral world.

This, then, seems to me to be another extraordinary contribution that homeopathy could make to the knowledge of the human being, to biology and to the renewal of the scientific horizon of life sciences in general.