Cynic wrote:
On Fri, 22 May 2009 17:53:13 +0100, Martin
wrote:

Only if water retains its purported homeopathic qualities after
passing through both its non-liquid states *and* also retains those
qualities in the presence of contaminents. I have no idea what
homeopaths have to say on that subject, but I suspect that they would
say that the act of passing through a gasseous state and condensing
back to distilled water destroys all homeopathic properties it may
have had, and that homeopathic qualities are destroyed if the water is
contaminated by substances other than extremely low amounts of the
homeopathic material.

It's not just low amounts, it's zero amounts. The quantity is well below
the Avogadro limit.

The homeopathic substance has not disappeared, so its molecules must
be distributed throughout at least *some* of the bottles filled from a
batch.

But *if* there is any merit at all in homeopathy - and I'm extremely
scepticle that there is - then it is probably due to some unknown and
as yet undetectable subatomic change that occurs within the water
molecules themselves as a result of their exposure to the substance
rather than the physical presence of the substance itself, so the fact
that none of the substance whatsoever is present in a particular
sample does not prove that the claim must be false.

Just as there is a change to the subatomic structure of a luminous
material that has been exposed to light in the recent past that makes
it different to the exact same material that has not had such
exposure, or a hard disk drive that contains data is different to a
hard disk drive that does not contain data in a way that cannot be
discovered by any change to its chemical makeup. In those cases the
subatomic changes create effects that are easily measurable by other
means - but a person relying only on a chemical analysis would
conclude that no change has taken place, just as a bottle of
homeopathic water appears to be no different in chemical composition
to a bottle of distilled water.

As for the reasoning that such a tiny amount of a substance could not
possibly make any significant changes - consider how less than a
1/1000th second exposure to quite dim light will make changes to a
photographic film that are undetectable until it is made to undergo
specific chemical reactions.


You don't think they keep all these quintillion little bottles do you?

Think what a 30C dilution actually means. Start with a 1 mole solution.
One drop of ingredient in 100 drops of water 10^-2 molear strength. Take
one drop from that and dilute with 100 drops of water 10^-4 molar
strength. Repeat and you're down to 10^-60 molar strength.

Avogadro's number is 10^23.

No, there is no original content left when you get down to these levels
of dilution. 10^23*10^-60