With this paragraph J.T.Kent begins his analysis of the problems involved in finding an unprejudiced observer stating that ' it would almost seem impossible to find at the present time one who could thus be described.' Later on he then comments that 'men cannot get rid of their prejudices until they settle upon and recognise authority', and that 'in Homeopathy the law and its principles must be accepted as authority.' This attitude towards authority rests very much on his own attitudes towards the scientist when he states in no uncertain terms that' the unprejudiced observer is the only true scientist.' (2)We know that Kent was a product of his times and can accept such attitudes with hindsight, nevertheless he accepted that within his own parameters there was a way that Homeopathy should be practised (establishing his own form of classical homeopathy) and that there was ultimately a Real world and a Real patient completely independent of his existence and his prejudices. He was not naive enough to assume that a complete lack of prejudice was possible, since at one point in his article he begs the practitioner ' to lay aside all that you have heretofore imagined or presumed ' ,nevertheless his own attitudes lie within the parameters of a methodology that assumed that the world we believe in is composed of objective facts. Science is the study of that world and hopes to show that all phenomena can be explained in terms of objective repeatable experiences. The purpose of science is to map all experience in a temporal order, fact following fact, cause leading to effect. Most of us believe that a scientific theory differs fundamentally from a pseudo-scientific theory e.g. the difference between astronomy and astrology, though for most of the time we would find it incredibly difficult to demarcate with clarity the division between the two. In a well known attempt to solve this demarcation problem, Karl Popper, this century 's foremost philosopher of science, stated that the defining feature of science is its falsability, in other words for a theory to be scientific it must be vulnerable to refutation by at least one possible event or conflict with a possible observation .(3) According to Popper this potential for refutation reveals that the theory clashes with experience and so is an instance of empirical science. Newtonian science is scientific since the occurrence of many possible events would falsify the theory such as the failure of Haley's comet to return to earth around the calculated time of 1758. Conversely any theory immune to falsification by some possible event is by definition pseudoscientific on this view since these theories fail to clash with experience.

If we accept the above criterion for demarcating the essential difference between a scientific and pseudo-scientific endeavour, then we are led to the conclusion that Homoeopathy certainly falls into the category of the pseudo-scientific.The most fundamental principle of homeopathy i.e. Law of Similars is clearly not falsifiable since the proof of its universality is clearly contradicted by the presence of orthodox medicine with its own particular principles.

However such criteria might ultimately turn out to be totally irrelevant since it is clear that though Homeopathy might be classified as a pseudo-science it has established a well defined methodology which has enabled it to sustain and evolve a medicine that is able to tackle the most complex forms of disease.

The paradox of such a methodology is its own insistence in defining itself as scientific, in the fashion and bias that Kent originally developed in the late 19 century when objectivity was the norm and subjectivity was eschewed as a possible evil in the evolving state of homeopathic therapeutics. Even recently I read an address to a homoeopathic conference in which Dr. R. Sankaran advocates the necessity for a scientific approach in the evolution of homoeopathy, as though the question of any element of subjectivity had been completely eradicated as a taint that could not be mentioned. Today, there is frankly an overwhelming amount of evidence from a number of different disciplines, such as the ' New Physics' , Cognitive Neuro-physiology etc., that invalidates the very notion of an independent objective reality, and it therefore seems strange and somewhat absurd not to explore the possible implications for homeopathic therapeutics. I will first cursorily glance at some of this evidence since many refuse to accept its implications for the evolving state of homeopathic medicine.

One of the most salient features of modern physics was the quantum theory which described the fundamental properties of matter and energy in a counter-intuitive and at times bizarre manner. At the base of this theory is the wave/particle duality of atoms and their components. When unobserved, an atom or sub-atomic particle behaves as a 'wave of possibility' ; an observation in effect 'collapses the wave function' and a particle appears.Over a number of decades ago these peculiar properties prompted comparisons to mental processes. From then onwards numerous scientists have grappled with its implications such as D. Bohm who thought that mental processes and quantum reality must be intimately linked.Globus in 1987 argued that 'possible worlds are superimposed within the brain- the holoworld, and perception both waking and dreaming, selects a world for unfolding from the holoworld. The collapse of the wave function is a selection process from a priori implicate worlds'(4). The end result of quantum theory has been to force us to recognise that observer and observed can no longer be viewed as independent entities. Consciousness and the physical world cannot be kept apart.

Such was the surprise at just how vital the observer was to the nature of reality that it prompted an enormous explosion in the cognitive sciences to try and understand how we came to create reality in just such a manner.

Psychological research since the turn of the century has been full of demonstrations ' that we see what we know'; in other words we look at the world through the categories and concepts of our minds. In one famous experiment people were flashed very brief exposures of playing cards which they were asked to identify. Unbeknownst to them some cards crossed colour with suit, so sometimes there would be a red six of clubs or black ten of hearts. People found it impossible to see what was there , insisting until the cards were placed in their hands that they were regular cards. In a book entitled ' A Theory of Almost Everything' the author Robert Barry (5) argues very forcefully that ' what you see is a reflection of various aspects of the self'. The world we know and experience is a only a reflection of the our own self and he coins the term ' a looking-glass world '. No matter how much knowledge or information one acquires, it will always remain knowledge in relation to you or to your particular perceptions of reality. You can never ultimately eliminate yourself in any process, in other words the state of an unprejudiced observer is patently absurd. Research on the relationships between our perceptions of self and others provides some evidence for this. R Barry then proceeds to delineate some evidence from a number of psychological experiments carried out on this type of perception. For example it was found that evaluations, judgements and predictions about a particular quality in other people often depend on the individual's own position relative to that quality. It was also suggested that 'we use our perception of self to fill information gaps on other when judgements are required on the basis of inadequate information (a phenomenon referred to as self-projection)'.We often assume that others have similar attitudes and interests as ourselves, and although we are not aware of this it is inevitable that we project our own experiences on to others especially in case-taking, and evaluate specifically within our own experiences. Furthermore it has also been suggested that we 'direct our perceptual processes in a self-serving manner to maintain or enhance self-esteem ' (a phenomenon known as self -image bias). In other words we tend to pay much attention to those aspect of life where we feel we are likely to attain some measure of success. Such a bias will tend to draw us towards those aspects of the patient we are most at home with and will cloud any possible impartiality.

Finally R. Barry found that the self is seen to serve as a frame of reference or baseline against which relevant information about others is compared and contrasted and also found that not only is the concept of self shaped by how we think others see us but that our perception of others is shaped by our own concept of self.

In order to test the relationship between self and others he performed a number of different psychological experiments. He asked 233 first year psychology students, whom he met for the first time to describe themselves and to describe himself. He found a very strong relationship between their perception of themselves and their perception of him . Those who described themselves as happy were more likely to see him as happy. In another experiment, he deliberately manipulated student's self -esteem by telling them they had done well or poorly on a bogus 'IQ Test'. They were then asked to watch a film and to describe the speaker in the film afterwards. Those who thought they had done poorly in the test were less likely to mention ability, in describing the speaker, than were the group who thought they had done well. The conclusions that can be reached about this evidence imply an overwhelming bias towards ourselves and our own perceptions , making any unprejudiced evaluation of a patient a virtual impossibility. These facts emerge very clearly in another great philosopher and psychologist William James who argued that our perceptions and experiences are ALWAYS shaped and moulded by our previous assumptions, desires, selective interests, hopes and fears. That is none of us can ever be completely objective, or in the words of W.James ' we add to reality, the world stands readily maleable , waiting to receive its final touches at our hands '(6). An even more forcible point is made in terms of the subjective properties of consciousness by T.Nagel , a prominent theoretician in the new field of consciousness studies,

' The subjectivity of consciousness is an irreducible feature of reality-without which we could not do physics or anything else- and it must occupy as fundamental a place in any credible world view as matter,energy, space, time and numbers.'(7)

Another piece of interesting research was recently done on the physiology of our vision. It concerned the control of Saccadic movements- a term used to define eye movements that are made to shift the gaze from one part of the visual field to another. One might think that the eyes could be directed to shift their gaze across the visual field by commands from the brain. But saccadic movements have been found to be too fast for visual feedback to be able to process the information, since feedback takes 150 milliseconds while saccades only take 20 milliseconds. The conclusions reached are that saccades are controlled not by actual feedback but by virtual internal feedback. This implies that the world we perceive is mostly a virtual world, and part of an internal construct of our own making that is updated only relatively slowly by real information from our senses. We have the illusion that we see clearly all around us but in fact only a very small region or our retina provides distinct vision. In normal everyday life, our eyes are perpetually on the move the sequence of brief fragments of clear vision that they provide being used to verify and correct our own personal model of the outside world. The implications for consciousness are that the operation of our internal model is largely unconscious until something goes wrong in the sense that there is sufficiently large discrepancy between predictions and what is actually being picked up by our senses.

The conclusions of the foregoing are that the world is basically a mirror image or reflection of our own desires, possibilities and perceptions and these alone will influence the outcome of our own patient's process towards states of health. Furthermore the implications of an epistemology ( the philosophical discipline that studies the way we perceive the world) based on a first-person perspective may well lead to a possible plurality of simillimum states. Since the perception of the remedy now becomes embedded within the context of the practitioner's ontological state thereby leading to a simillimum which will be a reflection of the practitioner's own ability to perceive his own state of wholeness. Different aspects of the whole ( assuming the simillimum to be such an aspect) will appear to different practitioners, each reflecting an aspect of their own belief structures.This therefore focuses attention on just how crucial our model of healing (based on our own beleifs) becomes to the entire process of homeo-therapeutics. Such a model must at least possess three aspects to consider itself a role model for wholeness. The first must be a sense of the infinite possibilities of self-healing ; the second ,a sense of perception which is grounded in the numinous, and thirdly a sense of penetration, by this I mean the ability to penetrate and realise different dimensions of our own personality(8). All three I suspect were part of the original classical model of homoeopathy influenced as it was by undercurrents of esotericism such as Swedenborgianism which tended towards emphasis on a first-person perspective. Today it is taught in a manner that is scientific, attempting to create an objective attitude, thereby limiting our perception of the homeopathic process to what is assumed it must be. Objectivity means clinical detachment and dispassionate forms of observation, leading to see patients and reality in a selective manner modelled on an authoritative mode of operation (9). It takes many years of training before the classical homeopath becomes detached, analytical and clinically pure. Such a training moulds his horizons to those that create a particular model of reality , selected and refined by so many years of training. Yet we know from our previous discussion that he becomes hostage to such a model, denying the possibilities of any parallel models of homeopathic reality. Moreover such an analytical mind, quantitatively weighing up symptoms by virtue of computers and books lacks real empathy and a proper sense of compassion, which is one fundamental feature of increasing the effects of the placebo effect Our homeopathic educational system is fundamentally tainted with the scientific episteme, leading to a heartless analytic mode of operation that not only denies our own crucial role in the healing process but persistently insists in the possibility of an unprejudiced observer in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. In my opinion the only valid method to remain partially unprejudiced is to use our intuitive abilities which entails a radical reappraisal of our present educational methods, with the introduction of short sharp provings which would have the effect of sensitising the practitioner to different states of ontological clarity, plus some form of co-counselling groups where our prejudices and projections could be explored so as to illustrate the way we project on to our patients our own fears and prejudices. And lastly a method that could effectively help us overcome our tendencies to separate patient/practitioner but would increase our participation in the healing process. Though at present the educational methods firmly rest on a third-person perspective, there is an asymmetry inherent in any homoeopathic process, since the first-person perspective ultimately decides, and though the third-person perspective is what has been successfully operant in the homoeopathic practise ever since it came into existence, one feels it is always doomed to leave some essential aspect of healing out of its explanatory scope(10). Though it is essential to begin the homeopathic educational process from a third-person perspective, as one begins to develop a state of ontological clarity, in which one might become aware of just how one's own state can influence the healing process ( a logical assumption from a first-person perspective) this can lead to a change in one's own emotive state from a dispassionate but focused form of sympathy to an engaged and focused form of empathy. Such a change involves an epistemological transformation which is ultimately dependent on an attitude of mind which as a perspective can never be gained from any form of educational process solely teaching from a third-person perspective. The most essential feature of the healing process is a to create a form of sustained empathy or 'love' with a sacrifice of personal identity in the interaction -even a merging or bonding with the patient. It is a form of resonance that overwhelms discord and creates infinite possibilities, and remarkable allusions to even this form of resonance can be found in scientific literature, as in the following quote by Prince Louis de Broglie, one of the founders of modern physics,