A Medley of Potpourri

Wednesday, August 30, 2023

Progress

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Progress is the movement towards a refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. In the context of progressivism, it refers to the proposition that advancements in technology, science, and social organization have resulted, and by extension will continue to result, in an improved human condition; the latter may happen as a result of direct human action, as in social enterprise or through activism, or as a natural part of sociocultural evolution.

The concept of progress was introduced in the early-19th-century social theories, especially social evolution as described by Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer. It was present in the Enlightenment's philosophies of history. As a goal, social progress has been advocated by varying realms of political ideologies with different theories on how it is to be achieved.

Measuring progress

Specific indicators for measuring progress can range from economic data, technical innovations, change in the political or legal system, and questions bearing on individual life chances, such as life expectancy and risk of disease and disability.

GDP growth has become a key orientation for politics and is often taken as a key figure to evaluate a politician's performance. However, GDP has a number of flaws that make it a bad measure of progress, especially for developed countries. For example, environmental damage is not taken into account nor is the sustainability of economic activity. Wikiprogress has been set up to share information on evaluating societal progress. It aims to facilitate the exchange of ideas, initiatives and knowledge. HumanProgress.org is another online resource that seeks to compile data on different measures of societal progress.

Our World in Data is a scientific online publication, based at the University of Oxford, that studies how to make progress against large global problems such as poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, war, existential risks, and inequality. The mission of Our World in Data is to present "research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems".

The Social Progress Index is a tool developed by the International Organization Imperative Social Progress, which measures the extent to which countries cover social and environmental needs of its citizenry. There are fifty-two indicators in three areas or dimensions: Basic Human Needs, and Foundations of Wellbeing and Opportunities which show the relative performance of nations.

Indices that can be used to measure progress include:

Scientific progress

Scientific progress is the idea that the scientific community learns more over time, which causes a body of scientific knowledge to accumulate. The chemists in the 19th century knew less about chemistry than the chemists in the 20th century, and they in turn knew less than the chemists in the 21st century. Looking forward, today's chemists reasonably expect that chemists in future centuries will know more than they do.

From the 18th century through late 20th century, the history of science, especially of the physical and biological sciences, was often presented as a progressive accumulation of knowledge, in which true theories replaced false beliefs. Some more recent historical interpretations, such as those of Thomas Kuhn, tend to portray the history of science in terms of competing paradigms or conceptual systems in a wider matrix of intellectual, cultural, economic and political trends. These interpretations, however, have met with opposition for they also portray the history of science as an incoherent system of incommensurable paradigms, not leading to any scientific progress, but only to the illusion of progress.

Whether other intellectual disciplines make progress in the same way as the sciences is a matter of debate. For example, one might expect that today's historians know more about global history than their ancient counterparts (consider the histories of Herodotus). Yet, knowledge can be lost through the passage of time, or the criteria for evaluating what is worth knowing can change. Similarly, there is considerable disagreement over whether fields such as philosophy make progress - or even whether they aim at accumulating knowledge in the same way as the sciences.

Social progress

Aspects of social progress, as described by Condorcet, have included the disappearance of slavery, the rise of literacy, the lessening of inequalities between the sexes, reforms of harsh prisons and the decline of poverty. The social progress of a society can be measured based on factors such as its ability to address fundamental human needs, help citizens improve their quality of life, and provide opportunities for citizens to succeed.

Social progress is often improved by increases in GDP, although other factors are also relevant. An imbalance between economic and social progress hinders further economic progress, and can lead to political instability. Where there is an imbalance between economic growth and social progress, political instability and unrest often arise. Lagging social progress also holds back economic growth in these and other countries that fail to address human needs, build social capital, and create opportunity for their citizens.

Status of women

How progress improved the status of women in traditional society was a major theme of historians starting in the Enlightenment and continuing to today. British theorists William Robertson (1721–1793) and Edmund Burke (1729–1797), along with many of their contemporaries, remained committed to Christian- and republican-based conceptions of virtue, while working within a new Enlightenment paradigm. The political agenda related beauty, taste, and morality to the imperatives and needs of modern societies of a high level of sophistication and differentiation. Two themes in the work of Robertson and Burke—the nature of women in 'savage' and 'civilized' societies and 'beauty in distress'—reveals how long-held convictions about the character of women, especially with regard to their capacity and right to appear in the public domain, were modified and adjusted to the idea of progress and became central to modern European civilization.

Classics experts have examined the status of women in the ancient world, concluding that in the Roman Empire, with its superior social organization, internal peace, and rule of law, allowed women to enjoy a somewhat better standing than in ancient Greece, where women were distinctly inferior. The inferior status of women in traditional China has raised the issue of whether the idea of progress requires a thoroughgoing rejection of traditionalism—a belief held by many Chinese reformers in the early 20th century.

Historians Leo Marx and Bruce Mazlish asking, "should we in fact abandon the idea of progress as a view of the past," answer that there is no doubt "that the status of women has improved markedly" in cultures that have adopted the Enlightenment idea of progress.

Modernization

Modernization was promoted by classical liberals in the 19th and 20th centuries, who called for the rapid modernization of the economy and society to remove the traditional hindrances to free markets and free movements of people. During the Enlightenment in Europe social commentators and philosophers began to realize that people themselves could change society and change their way of life. Instead of being made completely by gods, there was increasing room for the idea that people themselves made their own society—and not only that, as Giambattista Vico argued, because people made their own society, they could also fully comprehend it. This gave rise to new sciences, or proto-sciences, which claimed to provide new scientific knowledge about what society was like, and how one may change it for the better.

In turn, this gave rise to progressive opinion, in contrast with conservational opinion. The social conservationists were skeptical about panaceas for social ills. According to conservatives, attempts to radically remake society normally make things worse. Edmund Burke was the leading exponent of this, although later-day liberals like Hayek have espoused similar views. They argue that society changes organically and naturally, and that grand plans for the remaking of society, like the French Revolution, National Socialism and Communism hurt society by removing the traditional constraints on the exercise of power.

The scientific advances of the 16th and 17th centuries provided a basis for Francis Bacon's book the New Atlantis. In the 17th century, Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle described progress with respect to arts and the sciences, saying that each age has the advantage of not having to rediscover what was accomplished in preceding ages. The epistemology of John Locke provided further support and was popularized by the Encyclopedists Diderot, Holbach, and Condorcet. Locke had a powerful influence on the American Founding Fathers. The first complete statement of progress is that of Turgot, in his "A Philosophical Review of the Successive Advances of the Human Mind" (1750). For Turgot, progress covers not only the arts and sciences but, on their base, the whole of culture—manner, mores, institutions, legal codes, economy, and society. Condorcet predicted the disappearance of slavery, the rise of literacy, the lessening of inequalities between the sexes, reforms of harsh prisons and the decline of poverty.

John Stuart Mill's (1806–1873) ethical and political thought demonstrated faith in the power of ideas and of intellectual education for improving human nature or behavior. For those who do not share this faith the idea of progress becomes questionable.

Alfred Marshall (1842–1924), a British economist of the early 20th century, was a proponent of classical liberalism. In his highly influential Principles of Economics (1890), he was deeply interested in human progress and in what is now called sustainable development. For Marshall, the importance of wealth lay in its ability to promote the physical, mental, and moral health of the general population. After World War II, the modernization and development programs undertaken in the Third World were typically based on the idea of progress.

In Russia the notion of progress was first imported from the West by Peter the Great (1672–1725). An absolute ruler, he used the concept to modernize Russia and to legitimize his monarchy (unlike its usage in Western Europe, where it was primarily associated with political opposition). By the early 19th century, the notion of progress was being taken up by Russian intellectuals and was no longer accepted as legitimate by the tsars. Four schools of thought on progress emerged in 19th-century Russia: conservative (reactionary), religious, liberal, and socialist—the latter winning out in the form of Bolshevist materialism.^[24]

The intellectual leaders of the American Revolution, such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, were immersed in Enlightenment thought and believed the idea of progress meant that they could reorganize the political system to the benefit of the human condition; both for Americans and also, as Jefferson put it, for an "Empire of Liberty" that would benefit all mankind. In particular, Adams wrote “I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.”

Juan Bautista Alberdi (1810–1884) was one of the most influential political theorists in Argentina. Economic liberalism was the key to his idea of progress. He promoted faith in progress, while chiding fellow Latin Americans for blind copying of American and European models. He hoped for progress through promotion of immigration, education, and a moderate type of federalism and republicanism that might serve as a transition in Argentina to true democracy.

In Mexico, José María Luis Mora (1794–1850) was a leader of classical liberalism in the first generation after independence, leading the battle against the conservative trinity of the army, the church, and the hacendados. He envisioned progress as both a process of human development by the search for philosophical truth and as the introduction of an era of material prosperity by technological advancement. His plan for Mexican reform demanded a republican government bolstered by widespread popular education free of clerical control, confiscation and sale of ecclesiastical lands as a means of redistributing income and clearing government debts, and effective control of a reduced military force by the government. Mora also demanded the establishment of legal equality between native Mexicans and foreign residents. His program, untried in his lifetime, became the key element in the Mexican Constitution of 1857.

In Italy, the idea that progress in science and technology would lead to solutions for human ills was connected to the nationalism that united the country in 1860. The Piedmontese Prime Minister Camillo Cavour envisaged the railways as a major factor in the modernization and unification of the Italian peninsula. The new Kingdom of Italy, formed in 1861, worked to speed up the processes of modernization and industrialization that had begun in the north, but were slow to arrive in the Papal States and central Italy, and were nowhere in sight in the "Mezzogiorno" (that is, Southern Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia). The government sought to combat the backwardness of the poorer regions in the south and work towards augmenting the size and quality of the newly created Italian army so that it could compete on an equal footing with the powerful nations of Europe. In the same period, the government was legislating in favour of public education to fight the great problem of illiteracy, upgrade the teaching classes, improve existing schools, and procure the funds needed for social hygiene and care of the body as factors in the physical and moral regeneration of the race.

In China, in the 20th century the Kuomintang or Nationalist party, which ruled from the 1920s to the 1940s, advocated progress. The Communists under Mao Zedong adopted western models and their ruinous projects caused mass famines. After Mao's death, however, the new regime led by Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997) and his successors aggressively promoted modernization of the economy using capitalist models and imported western technology. This was termed the "Opening of China" in the west, and more broadly encompasses Chinese economic reform.

Among environmentalists, there is a continuum between two opposing poles. The one pole is optimistic, progressive, and business-oriented, and endorses the classic idea of progress. For example, bright green environmentalism endorses the idea that new designs, social innovations and green technologies can solve critical environmental challenges. The other is pessimistic in respect of technological solutions, warning of impending global crisis (through climate change or peak oil, for example) and tends to reject the very idea of modernity and the myth of progress that is so central to modernization thinking. Similarly, Kirkpatrick Sale, wrote about progress as a myth benefiting the few, and a pending environmental doomsday for everyone. An example is the philosophy of Deep Ecology.

Philosophy

Sociologist Robert Nisbet said that "No single idea has been more important than ... the Idea of Progress in Western civilization for three thousand years", and defines five "crucial premises" of the idea of progress:

value of the past
nobility of Western civilization
worth of economic/technological growth
faith in reason and scientific/scholarly knowledge obtained through reason
intrinsic importance and worth of life on earth

Sociologist P. A. Sorokin said, "The ancient Chinese, Babylonian, Hindu, Greek, Roman, and most of the medieval thinkers supporting theories of rhythmical, cyclical or trendless movements of social processes were much nearer to reality than the present proponents of the linear view". Unlike Confucianism and to a certain extent Taoism, that both search for an ideal past, the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition believes in the fulfillment of history, which was translated into the idea of progress in the modern age. Therefore, Chinese proponents of modernization have looked to western models. According to Thompson, the late Qing dynasty reformer, Kang Youwei, believed he had found a model for reform and "modernisation" in the Ancient Chinese Classics.

Philosopher Karl Popper said that progress was not fully adequate as a scientific explanation of social phenomena. More recently, Kirkpatrick Sale, a self-proclaimed neo-luddite author, wrote exclusively about progress as a myth, in an essay entitled "Five Facets of a Myth".

Iggers (1965) says that proponents of progress underestimated the extent of man's destructiveness and irrationality, while critics misunderstand the role of rationality and morality in human behavior.

In 1946, psychoanalyst Charles Baudouin claimed modernity has retained the "corollary" of the progress myth, the idea that the present is superior to the past, while at the same time insisting that it is free of the myth:

The last two centuries were familiar with the myth of progress. Our own century has adopted the myth of modernity. The one myth has replaced the other. ...
Men ceased to believe in progress; but only to pin their faith to more tangible realities, whose sole original significance had been that they were the instruments of progress. ..
This exaltation of the present ... is a corollary of that very faith in progress which people claim to have discarded. The present is superior to the past, by definition, only in a mythology of progress. Thus one retains the corollary while rejecting the principle. There is only one way of retaining a position of whose instability one is conscious. One must simply refrain from thinking.

A cyclical theory of history was adopted by Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), a German historian who wrote The Decline of the West in 1920. World War I, World War II, and the rise of totalitarianism demonstrated that progress was not automatic and that technological improvement did not necessarily guarantee democracy and moral advancement. British historian Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975) felt that Christianity would help modern civilization overcome its challenges.

The Jeffersonians said that history is not exhausted but that man may begin again in a new world. Besides rejecting the lessons of the past, they Americanized the idea of progress by democratizing and vulgarizing it to include the welfare of the common man as a form of republicanism. As Romantics deeply concerned with the past, collecting source materials and founding historical societies, the Founding Fathers were animated by clear principles. They saw man in control of his destiny, saw virtue as a distinguishing characteristic of a republic, and were concerned with happiness, progress, and prosperity. Thomas Paine, combining the spirit of rationalism and romanticism, pictured a time when America's innocence would sound like a romance, and concluded that the fall of America could mark the end of 'the noblest work of human wisdom.'

Historian J. B. Bury wrote in 1920:

To the minds of most people the desirable outcome of human development would be a condition of society in which all the inhabitants of the planet would enjoy a perfectly happy existence....It cannot be proved that the unknown destination towards which man is advancing is desirable. The movement may be Progress, or it may be in an undesirable direction and therefore not Progress..... The Progress of humanity belongs to the same order of ideas as Providence or personal immortality. It is true or it is false, and like them it cannot be proved either true or false. Belief in it is an act of faith.

In the postmodernist thought steadily gaining ground from the 1980s, the grandiose claims of the modernizers are steadily eroded, and the very concept of social progress is again questioned and scrutinized. In the new vision, radical modernizers like Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong appear as totalitarian despots, whose vision of social progress is held to be totally deformed. Postmodernists question the validity of 19th-century and 20th-century notions of progress—both on the capitalist and the Marxist side of the spectrum. They argue that both capitalism and Marxism over-emphasize technological achievements and material prosperity while ignoring the value of inner happiness and peace of mind. Postmodernism posits that both dystopia and utopia are one and the same, overarching grand narratives with impossible conclusions.

Some 20th-century authors refer to the "Myth of Progress" to refer to the idea that the human condition will inevitably improve. In 1932, English physician Montague David Eder wrote: "The myth of progress states that civilization has moved, is moving, and will move in a desirable direction. Progress is inevitable... Philosophers, men of science and politicians have accepted the idea of the inevitability of progress." Eder argues that the advancement of civilization is leading to greater unhappiness and loss of control in the environment. The strongest critics of the idea of progress complain that it remains a dominant idea in the 21st century, and shows no sign of diminished influence. As one fierce critic, British historian John Gray (b. 1948), concludes:

Faith in the liberating power of knowledge is encrypted into modern life. Drawing on some of Europe's most ancient traditions, and daily reinforced by the quickening advance of science, it cannot be given up by an act of will. The interaction of quickening scientific advance with unchanging human needs is a fate that we may perhaps temper, but cannot overcome... Those who hold to the possibility of progress need not fear. The illusion that through science humans can remake the world is an integral part of the modern condition. Renewing the eschatological hopes of the past, progress is an illusion with a future.

Recently the idea of progress has been generalized to psychology, being related with the concept of a goal, that is, progress is understood as "what counts as a means of advancing towards the end result of a given defined goal."

Antiquity

Historian J. B. Bury said that thought in ancient Greece was dominated by the theory of world-cycles or the doctrine of eternal return, and was steeped in a belief parallel to the Judaic "fall of man," but rather from a preceding "Golden Age" of innocence and simplicity. Time was generally regarded as the enemy of humanity which depreciates the value of the world. He credits the Epicureans with having had a potential for leading to the foundation of a theory of progress through their materialistic acceptance of the atomism of Democritus as the explanation for a world without an intervening deity.

For them, the earliest condition of men resembled that of the beasts, and from this primitive and miserable condition they laboriously reached the existing state of civilisation, not by external guidance or as a consequence of some initial design, but simply by the exercise of human intelligence throughout a long period.

Robert Nisbet and Gertrude Himmelfarb have attributed a notion of progress to other Greeks. Xenophanes said "The gods did not reveal to men all things in the beginning, but men through their own search find in the course of time that which is better."

Renaissance

During the Medieval period, science was to a large extent based on Scholastic (a method of thinking and learning from the Middle Ages) interpretations of Aristotle's work. The Renaissance of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries changed the mindset in Europe towards an empirical view, based on a pantheistic interpretation of Plato. This induced a revolution in curiosity about nature in general and scientific advance, which opened the gates for technical and economic advance. Furthermore, the individual potential was seen as a never-ending quest for being God-like, paving the way for a view of Man based on unlimited perfection and progress.

Age of Enlightenment (1650–1800)

In the Enlightenment, French historian and philosopher Voltaire (1694–1778) was a major proponent of progress. At first Voltaire's thought was informed by the idea of progress coupled with rationalism. His subsequent notion of the historical idea of progress saw science and reason as the driving forces behind societal advancement.

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) argued that progress is neither automatic nor continuous and does not measure knowledge or wealth, but is a painful and largely inadvertent passage from barbarism through civilization toward enlightened culture and the abolition of war. Kant called for education, with the education of humankind seen as a slow process whereby world history propels mankind toward peace through war, international commerce, and enlightened self-interest.

Scottish theorist Adam Ferguson (1723–1816) defined human progress as the working out of a divine plan, though he rejected predestination. The difficulties and dangers of life provided the necessary stimuli for human development, while the uniquely human ability to evaluate led to ambition and the conscious striving for excellence. But he never adequately analyzed the competitive and aggressive consequences stemming from his emphasis on ambition even though he envisioned man's lot as a perpetual striving with no earthly culmination. Man found his happiness only in effort.

Some scholars consider the idea of progress that was affirmed with the Enlightenment, as a secularization of ideas from early Christianity, and a reworking of ideas from ancient Greece.

Romanticism and 19th century

In the 19th century, Romantic critics charged that progress did not automatically better the human condition, and in some ways could make it worse. Thomas Malthus (1766–1834) reacted against the concept of progress as set forth by William Godwin and Condorcet because he believed that inequality of conditions is "the best (state) calculated to develop the energies and faculties of man". He said, "Had population and food increased in the same ratio, it is probable that man might never have emerged from the savage state". He argued that man's capacity for improvement has been demonstrated by the growth of his intellect, a form of progress which offsets the distresses engendered by the law of population.

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) criticized the idea of progress as the 'weakling's doctrines of optimism,' and advocated undermining concepts such as faith in progress, to allow the strong individual to stand above the plebeian masses. An important part of his thinking consists of the attempt to use the classical model of 'eternal recurrence of the same' to dislodge the idea of progress.

Iggers (1965) argues there was general agreement in the late 19th century that the steady accumulation of knowledge and the progressive replacement of conjectural, that is, theological or metaphysical, notions by scientific ones was what created progress. Most scholars concluded this growth of scientific knowledge and methods led to the growth of industry and the transformation of warlike societies into industrial and pacific ones. They agreed as well that there had been a systematic decline of coercion in government, and an increasing role of liberty and of rule by consent. There was more emphasis on impersonal social and historical forces; progress was increasingly seen as the result of an inner logic of society.

Marxist theory (late 19th century)

Marx developed a theory of historical materialism. He describes the mid-19th-century condition in The Communist Manifesto as follows:

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty, and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all which is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind.

Furthermore, Marx described the process of social progress, which in his opinion is based on the interaction between the productive forces and the relations of production:

No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.

Capitalism is thought by Marx as a process of continual change, in which the growth of markets dissolve all fixities in human life, and Marx argues that capitalism is progressive and non-reactionary. Marxism further states that capitalism, in its quest for higher profits and new markets, will inevitably sow the seeds of its own destruction. Marxists believe that, in the future, capitalism will be replaced by socialism and eventually communism.

Many advocates of capitalism such as Schumpeter agreed with Marx's analysis of capitalism as a process of continual change through creative destruction, but, unlike Marx, believed and hoped that capitalism could essentially go on forever.

Thus, by the beginning of the 20th century, two opposing schools of thought—Marxism and liberalism—believed in the possibility and the desirability of continual change and improvement. Marxists strongly opposed capitalism and the liberals strongly supported it, but the one concept they could both agree on was progress, which affirms the power of human beings to make, improve and reshape their society, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation. Modernity denotes cultures that embrace that concept of progress. (This is not the same as modernism, which was the artistic and philosophical response to modernity, some of which embraced technology while rejecting individualism, but more of which rejected modernity entirely.)

Alternative abiogenesis scenarios

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_abiogenesis_scenarios

A scenario is a set of related concepts pertinent to the origin of life (abiogenesis), such as the iron-sulfur world. Many alternative abiogenesis scenarios have been proposed by scientists in a variety of fields from the 1950s onwards in an attempt to explain how the complex mechanisms of life could have come into existence. These include hypothesized ancient environments that might have been favourable for the origin of life, and possible biochemical mechanisms.

Environments

Many environments have been proposed for the origin of life.

Fluctuating salinity: dilute and dry-down

Harold Blum noted in 1957 that if proto-nucleic acid chains spontaneously form duplex structures, then there is no way to dissociate them.

The Oparin-Haldane hypothesis addresses the formation, but not the dissociation, of nucleic acid polymers and duplexes. However, nucleic acids are unusual because, in the absence of counterions (low salt) to neutralize the high charges on opposing phosphate groups, the nucleic acid duplex dissociates into single chains. Early tides, driven by a close moon, could have generated rapid cycles of dilution (high tide, low salt) and concentration (dry-down at low tide, high salt) that exclusively promoted the replication of nucleic acids through a process dubbed tidal chain reaction (TCR). This theory has been criticized on the grounds that early tides may not have been so rapid, although regression from current values requires an Earth–Moon juxtaposition at around two Ga, for which there is no evidence, and early tides may have been approximately every seven hours. Another critique is that only 2–3% of the Earth's crust may have been exposed above the sea until late in terrestrial evolution.

The TCR (tidal chain reaction) theory has mechanistic advantages over thermal association/dissociation at deep-sea vents because TCR requires that chain assembly (template-driven polymerization) takes place during the dry-down phase, when precursors are most concentrated, whereas thermal cycling needs polymerization to take place during the cold phase, when the rate of chain assembly is lowest and precursors are likely to be more dilute.

Hot freshwater lakes

Jack W. Szostak suggested that geothermal activity provides greater opportunities for the origination of life in open lakes where there is a buildup of minerals. In 2010, based on spectral analysis of sea and hot mineral water, Ignat Ignatov and Oleg Mosin demonstrated that life may have predominantly originated in hot mineral water. Hot mineral water that contains hydrocarbonate and calcium ions has the most optimal range. This case is similar to the origin of life in hydrothermal vents, but with hydrocarbonate and calcium ions in hot water.At a pH of 9–11, the reactions can take place in seawater. According to Melvin Calvin, certain reactions of condensation-dehydration of amino acids and nucleotides in individual blocks of peptides and nucleic acids can take place in the primary hydrosphere with pH 9–11 at a later evolutionary stage. Some of these compounds like hydrocyanic acid (HCN) have been proven in the experiments of Miller. This is the environment in which the stromatolites have been created. David Ward described the formation of stromatolites in hot mineral water at the Yellowstone National Park. In 2011, Tadashi Sugawara created a protocell in hot water.

Geothermal springs

Bruce Damer and David Deamer argue that cell membranes cannot be formed in salty seawater, and must therefore have originated in freshwater environments like pools replenished by a combination of geothermal springs and rainfall. Before the continents formed, the only dry land on Earth would be volcanic islands, where rainwater would form ponds where lipids could form the first stages towards cell membranes. During multiple wet-dry cycles, biopolymers would be synthesized and are encapsulated in vesicles after condensation. Zinc sulfide and manganese sulfide in these ponds would have catalyzed organic compounds by abiotic photosynthesis. Experimental research at geothermal springs successfully synthesized polymers and were encapsulated in vesicles after exposure to UV light and multiple wet-dry cycles. At temperatures of 60 to 80 °C at geothermal fields, biochemical reactions can occur. These predecessors of true cells are assumed to have behaved more like a superorganism rather than individual structures, where the porous membranes would house molecules which would leak out and enter other protocells. Only when true cells had evolved would they gradually adapt to saltier environments and enter the ocean.

6 of the 11 biochemical reactions of the rTCA cycle can occur in hot metal-rich acidic water which suggests metabolic reactions might have originated in this environment, this is consistent with the enhanced stability of RNA phosphodiester, aminoacyl-tRNA bonds, and peptides in acidic conditions. Cycling between supercritical and subcritical CO₂ at tectonic fault zones might have lead to peptides integrating with and stabilizing lipid membranes. This is suggested to have driven membrane protein evolution, as it shown that a selected peptide (H-Lys-Ser-Pro-Phe-Pro-Phe-Ala-Ala-OH) causes the increase of membrane permeability to water. David Deamer and Bruce Damer states that the prebiotic chemistry does not require ultraviolet irradiation as the chemistry could also have occurred under shaded areas that protected biomolecules from photolysis.

Deep sea alkaline vents

Nick Lane believes that no known life forms could have utilized zinc-sulfide based photosynthesis, lightning, volcanic pyrite synthesis, or UV radiation as a source of energy. Rather, he instead suggests that deep sea alkaline vents is more likely to have been a source energy for early cellular life. Serpentinization at alkaline hydrothermal vents produce methane and ammonia. Mineral particles that have similar properties to enzymes at deep sea vents would catalyze organic compounds out of dissolved CO₂ within seawater. Porous rock might have promoted condensation reactions of biopolymers and act as a compartment of membranous structures, however it is unknown about how it could promote coding and metabolism. Acetyl phosphate, which is readily synthesized from thioacetate, can promote aggregation of adenosine monophosphate of up to 7 monomers which is considered energetically favored in water due to interactions between nucleobases. Acetyl phosphate can stabilize aggregation of nucleotides in the presence of Na⁺ and could possibly promote polymerization at mineral surfaces or lower water activity. An external proton gradient within a membrane would have been maintained between the acidic ocean and alkaline seawater.The descendants of the last universal common ancestor, bacteria and archaea, were probably methanogens and acetogens. The earliest microfossils, dated to be 4.28 to 3.77 Ga, were found at hydrothermal vent precipitates. These microfossils suggest that early cellular life began at deep sea hydrothermal vents. Exergonic reactions at these environments could have provided free energy that promoted chemical reactions conducive to prebiotic biomolecules.

Nonenzymatic reactions of glycolysis and the pentose phosphate pathway can occur in the presence of ferrous iron at 70 °C, the reactions produce erythrose 4-phosphate, an amino acid precursor and ribose 5-phosphate, a nucleotide precursor. Pyrimidines are shown to be synthesized from the reaction between aspartate and carbamoyl phosphate at 60 °C and in the presence of metals, it is suggested that purines could be synthesized from the catalysis of metals. Adenosine monophosphate are also shown to be synthesized from adenine, monopotassium phosphate or pyrophosphate, and ribose at silica at 70 °C. Reductive amination and transamination reactions catalyzed by alkaline hydrothermal vent mineral and metal ions produce amino acids. Long chain fatty acids can be derived from formic acid or oxalic acid during Fischer-Tropsch-type synthesis. Carbohydrates containing an isoprene skeleton can be synthesized from the formose reaction. Isoprenoids incorporated into fatty acid vesicles can stabilize the vesicles, which are suggested to have driven the divergence of bacterial and archaeal lipids.

Volcanic ash in the ocean

Geoffrey W. Hoffmann has argued that a complex nucleation event as the origin of life involving both polypeptides and nucleic acid is compatible with the time and space available in the primary oceans of Earth. Hoffmann suggests that volcanic ash may provide the many random shapes needed in the postulated complex nucleation event. This aspect of the theory can be tested experimentally.

Gold's deep-hot biosphere

In the 1970s, Thomas Gold proposed the theory that life first developed not on the surface of the Earth, but several kilometers below the surface. It is claimed that the discovery of microbial life below the surface of another body in our Solar System would lend significant credence to this theory.

Radioactive beach hypothesis

Zachary Adam claims that tidal processes that occurred during a time when the Moon was much closer may have concentrated grains of uranium and other radioactive elements at the high-water mark on primordial beaches, where they may have been responsible for generating life's building blocks. According to computer models, a deposit of such radioactive materials could show the same self-sustaining nuclear reaction as that found in the Oklo uranium ore seam in Gabon. Such radioactive beach sand might have provided sufficient energy to generate organic molecules, such as amino acids and sugars from acetonitrile in water. Radioactive monazite material also has released soluble phosphate into the regions between sand-grains, making it biologically "accessible." Thus amino acids, sugars, and soluble phosphates might have been produced simultaneously, according to Adam. Radioactive actinides, left behind in some concentration by the reaction, might have formed part of organometallic complexes. These complexes could have been important early catalysts to living processes.

John Parnell has suggested that such a process could provide part of the "crucible of life" in the early stages of any early wet rocky planet, so long as the planet is large enough to have generated a system of plate tectonics which brings radioactive minerals to the surface. As the early Earth is thought to have had many smaller plates, it might have provided a suitable environment for such processes.

The hypercycle

In the early 1970s, Manfred Eigen and Peter Schuster examined the transient stages between the molecular chaos and a self-replicating hypercycle in a prebiotic soup. In a hypercycle, the information storing system (possibly RNA) produces an enzyme, which catalyzes the formation of another information system, in sequence until the product of the last aids in the formation of the first information system. Mathematically treated, hypercycles could create quasispecies, which through natural selection entered into a form of Darwinian evolution. A boost to hypercycle theory was the discovery of ribozymes capable of catalyzing their own chemical reactions. The hypercycle theory requires the existence of complex biochemicals, such as nucleotides, which do not form under the conditions proposed by the Miller–Urey experiment.

Biochemistry

Different forms of life with variable origin processes may have appeared quasi-simultaneously in the early Earth. The other forms may be extinct, having left distinctive fossils through their different biochemistry. Metabolism-like reactions could have occurred naturally in early oceans, before the first organisms evolved. Some of these reactions can produce RNA, and others resemble two essential reaction cascades of metabolism: glycolysis and the pentose phosphate pathway, that provide essential precursors for nucleic acids, amino acids and lipids.

Fox proteinoids

In trying to uncover the intermediate stages of abiogenesis mentioned by Bernal, Sidney Fox in the 1950s and 1960s studied the spontaneous formation of peptide structures under plausibly early Earth conditions. In one of his experiments, he allowed amino acids to dry out as if puddled in a warm, dry spot in prebiotic conditions: In an experiment to set suitable conditions for life to form, Fox collected volcanic material from a cinder cone in Hawaii. He discovered that the temperature was over 100 °C just 4 inches (100 mm) beneath the surface of the cinder cone, and suggested that this might have been the environment in which life was created—molecules could have formed and then been washed through the loose volcanic ash into the sea. He placed lumps of lava over amino acids derived from methane, ammonia and water, sterilized all materials, and baked the lava over the amino acids for a few hours in a glass oven. A brown, sticky substance formed over the surface, and when the lava was drenched in sterilized water, a thick, brown liquid leached out. He found that, as they dried, the amino acids formed long, often cross-linked, thread-like, submicroscopic polypeptides.

Protein amyloid

An origin-of-life theory based on self-replicating beta-sheet structures has been put forward by Maury in 2009. The theory suggest that self-replicating and self-assembling catalytic amyloids were the first informational polymers in a primitive pre-RNA world. The main arguments for the amyloid hypothesis is based on the structural stability, autocatalytic and catalytic properties, and evolvability of beta-sheet based informational systems. Such systems are also error correcting and chiroselective.

First protein that condenses substrates during thermal cycling: thermosynthesis

Convection cells in fluid placed in a gravity field are selforganizing and enable thermal cycling of the suspended contents in the fluid such as protocells containing protoenzymes that work on thermal cycling.

The thermosynthesis hypothesis considers chemiosmosis more basal than fermentation: the ATP synthase enzyme, which sustains chemiosmosis, is the currently extant enzyme most closely related to the first metabolic process. The thermosynthesis hypothesis does not even invoke a pathway: ATP synthase's binding change mechanism resembles a physical adsorption process that yields free energy. The result would be convection which would bring a continual supply of reactants to the protoenzyme. The described first protein may be simple in the sense that it requires only a short sequence of conserved amino acid residues, a sequent sufficient for the appropriate catalytic cleft.

Pre-RNA world: The ribose issue and its bypass

A different type of nucleic acid, such as peptide nucleic acid, threose nucleic acid or glycol nucleic acid, could have been the first to emerge as a self-reproducing molecule, later replaced by RNA.Larralde et al., say that "the generally accepted prebiotic synthesis of ribose, the formose reaction, yields numerous sugars without any selectivity". They conclude that "the backbone of the first genetic material could not have contained ribose or other sugars because of their instability", meaning that the ester linkage of ribose and phosphoric acid in RNA is prone to hydrolysis.

Pyrimidine ribonucleosides and nucleotides have been synthesized by reactions which by-pass the free sugars, and are assembled stepwise using nitrogenous or oxygenous chemistries. Sutherland has demonstrated high-yielding routes to cytidine and uridine ribonucleotides from small 2 and 3 carbon fragments such as glycolaldehyde, glyceraldehyde or glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate, cyanamide and cyanoacetylene. A step in this sequence allows the isolation of enantiopure ribose aminooxazoline if the enantiomeric excess of glyceraldehyde is 60% or greater. This can be viewed as a prebiotic purification step. Ribose aminooxazoline can then react with cyanoacetylene to give alpha cytidine ribonucleotide. Photoanomerization with UV light allows for inversion about the 1' anomeric centre to give the correct beta stereochemistry. In 2009 they showed that the same simple building blocks allow access, via phosphate controlled nucleobase elaboration, to 2',3'-cyclic pyrimidine nucleotides directly, which can polymerize into RNA. Similar photo-sanitization can create pyrimidine-2',3'-cyclic phosphates.

Autocatalysis

Autocatalysts are substances that catalyze the production of themselves and therefore are "molecular replicators." The simplest self-replicating chemical systems are autocatalytic, and typically contain three components: a product molecule and two precursor molecules. The product molecule joins the precursor molecules, which in turn produce more product molecules from more precursor molecules. The product molecule catalyzes the reaction by providing a complementary template that binds to the precursors, thus bringing them together. Such systems have been demonstrated both in biological macromolecules and in small organic molecules.

It has been proposed that life initially arose as autocatalytic chemical networks. Julius Rebek and colleagues combined amino adenosine and pentafluorophenyl esters with the autocatalyst amino adenosine triacid ester (AATE). One product was a variant of AATE which catalyzed its own synthesis. This demonstrated that autocatalysts could compete within a population of entities with heredity, a rudimentary form of natural selection.

Synthesis based on hydrogen cyanide

A research project completed in 2015 by John Sutherland and others found that a network of reactions beginning with hydrogen cyanide and hydrogen sulfide, in streams of water irradiated by UV light, could produce the chemical components of proteins and lipids, as well as those of RNA, while not producing a wide range of other compounds. The researchers used the term "cyanosulfidic" to describe this network of reactions.

Simulated chemical pathways

In 2020, chemists described possible chemical pathways from nonliving prebiotic chemicals to complex biochemicals that could give rise to living organisms, based on a new computer program named AllChemy.

Viral origin

Evidence for a "virus first" hypothesis, which may support theories of the RNA world, was suggested in 2015.One of the difficulties for the study of the origins of viruses is their high rate of mutation; this is particularly the case in RNA retroviruses like HIV. A 2015 study compared protein fold structures across different branches of the tree of life, where researchers can reconstruct the evolutionary histories of the folds and of the organisms whose genomes code for those folds. They argue that protein folds are better markers of ancient events as their three-dimensional structures can be maintained even as the sequences that code for those begin to change. Thus, the viral protein repertoire retain traces of ancient evolutionary history that can be recovered using advanced bioinformatics approaches. Those researchers think that "the prolonged pressure of genome and particle size reduction eventually reduced virocells into modern viruses (identified by the complete loss of cellular makeup), meanwhile other coexisting cellular lineages diversified into modern cells." The data suggest that viruses originated from ancient cells that co-existed with the ancestors of modern cells. These ancient cells likely contained segmented RNA genomes.

A computational model (2015) has shown that virus capsids may have originated in the RNA world and served as a means of horizontal transfer between replicator communities. These communities could not survive if the number of gene parasites increased, with certain genes being responsible for the formation of these structures and those that favored the survival of self-replicating communities. The displacement of these ancestral genes between cellular organisms could favor the appearance of new viruses during evolution. Viruses retain a replication module inherited from the prebiotic stage since it is absent in cells. So this is evidence that viruses could originate from the RNA world and could also emerge several times in evolution through genetic escape in cells.

Encapsulation without a membrane

Polyester droplets

Tony Jia and Kuhan Chandru have proposed spontaneously-forming membraneless polyester droplets in early cellularization before the innovation of lipid vesicles. Protein function within and RNA function in the presence of certain polyester droplets was shown to be preserved within the droplets. The droplets have scaffolding ability, by allowing lipids to assemble around them; this may have prevented leakage of genetic materials.

Proteinoid microspheres

Fox observed in the 1960s that proteinoids could form cell-like structures named "proteinoid microspheres". The amino acids had combined to form proteinoids, which formed small globules. These were not cells; their clumps and chains were reminiscent of cyanobacteria, but they contained no functional nucleic acids or other encoded information. Colin Pittendrigh stated in 1967 that "laboratories will be creating a living cell within ten years", a remark that reflected the typical contemporary naivety about the complexity of cell structures.

Jeewanu protocell

A further protocell model is the Jeewanu. First synthesized in 1963 from simple minerals and basic organics while exposed to sunlight, it is reported to have some metabolic capabilities, the presence of a semipermeable membrane, amino acids, phospholipids, carbohydrates and RNA-like molecules. However, the nature and properties of the Jeewanu remains to be clarified. Electrostatic interactions induced by short, positively charged, hydrophobic peptides containing 7 amino acids in length or fewer, can attach RNA to a vesicle membrane, the basic cell membrane.

RNA-DNA world

In 2020, coevolution of a RNA-DNA mixture based on diamidophosphate was proposed.The mixture of RNA-DNA sequences, called chimeras, have weak affinity and form weaker duplex structures. This is advantageous in an abiotic scenario and these chimeras have been shown to replicate RNA and DNA – overcoming the "template-product" inhibition problem, where a pure RNA or pure DNA strand is unable to replicate non-enzymatically because it binds too strongly to its partners. This could lead to an abiotic cross-catalytic amplification of RNA and DNA. A continuous chemical reaction network in water and under high-energy radiation can generate precursors for early RNA.

In 2022, evolution experiments of self-replicating RNA showed how RNA may have evolved to diverse complex molecules in RNA world conditions. The RNA evolved to a "replicator network comprising five types of RNAs with diverse interactions" such as cooperation for replication of other members (multiple coexisting host and parasite lineages).

History of chiropractic

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chiropractic

The history of chiropractic began in 1895 when Daniel David Palmer of Iowa performed the first chiropractic adjustment on a partially deaf janitor, Harvey Lillard. Palmer claims to have had principles of chiropractic treatment passed along to him during a seance by a long-dead doctor named Dr. Jim Atkinson. While Lillard was working without his shirt on in Palmer's office, Lillard bent over to empty the trash can. Palmer noticed that Lillard had a vertebra out of position. He asked Lillard what happened, and Lillard replied, "I moved the wrong way, and I heard a 'pop' in my back, and that's when I lost my hearing." Palmer, who was also involved in many other natural healing philosophies, had Lillard lie face down on the floor and proceeded with the adjustment. The next day, Lillard told Palmer, "I can hear that rackets on the streets." This experience led Palmer to open a school of chiropractic two years later. Rev. Samuel H. Weed coined the word "chiropractic" by combining the Greek words cheiro (hand) and praktikos (doing or action).

Chiropractic's early philosophy was rooted in vitalism, naturalism, magnetism, spiritualism and other constructs that are not amenable to the scientific method, although Palmer tried to merge science and metaphysics. In 1896, Palmer's first descriptions and underlying philosophy of chiropractic echoed Andrew Still's principles of osteopathy established a decade earlier. Both described the body as a "machine" whose parts could be manipulated to produce a drugless cure. Both professed the use of spinal manipulation on joint dysfunction/subluxation to improve health. Palmer distinguished his work by noting that he was the first to use short-lever HVLA (high velocity low amplitude) joint manipulation techniques using the spinous process and transverse processes as mechanical levers. He described the effects of chiropractic spinal manipulation as being mediated primarily by the nervous system.

Despite the similarities between chiropractic and osteopathy, the latter's practitioners sought to differentiate themselves by seeking licensure to regulate the profession, calling chiropractic a "bastardized form of osteopathy". In 1907 in a test of the new osteopathy law, a Wisconsin-based chiropractor was charged with practicing osteopathic medicine without a license. Practicing medicine without a license led to many chiropractors, including D.D. Palmer, being jailed. Ironically, Palmer's legal defence of chiropractic consisted of the first chiropractic textbook Modernized Chiropractic published in 1906, written by "mixer" chiropractors Longworthy, Smith, et al., whom Palmer despised. Although the chiropractors won their first test case in Wisconsin in 1907, prosecutions instigated by state medical boards became increasingly common and in many cases they were successful. In response, chiropractors conducted political campaigns to secure separate licensing statutes, eventually succeeding in all fifty states, from Kansas in 1913 to Louisiana in 1974.

Division within the profession has been intense, with "mixers" combining spinal adjustments with other treatments, and "straights" relying solely on spinal adjustments. A conference sponsored by the National Institutes of Health in 1975 spurred the development of chiropractic research. The American Medical Association called chiropractic an "unscientific cult" and boycotted it until losing a 1987 antitrust case. For most of its existence, chiropractic has battled with mainstream medicine, sustained by antiscientific and pseudoscientific ideas such as subluxation.By the mid-1990s there was a growing scholarly interest in chiropractic.

1890s

In 1895, the world was in the Second Industrial Revolution, marked by innovation and creativity. Health care had emerged from the practice of heroic medicine. All varieties of treatments and cures including scientific medicine, vitalism, herbalism, magnetism and leeches, lances, tinctures and patent medicines were competing to be the new method for the century. Neither consumers nor many practitioners had much knowledge of either the causes of, or cures for, illnesses. The theory of modern medicine, fueled by Louis Pasteur's refutation of the centuries-old spontaneous generation theory in 1859, was growing as Charles Darwin published his book on natural selection. The German bacteriologist Robert Koch formulated his postulates, bringing scientific clarity to what was a new field. Drugs, medicines and quack cures were becoming more prevalent and were unregulated. Concerned about what he saw as the abusive nature of drugging, MD Andrew Taylor Still ventured into magnetic healing (meaning hypnotism) and bonesetting in 1875. He opened the American School of Osteopathy (ASO) in Kirksville, Missouri in 1892.

First chiropractic adjustment

Daniel David Palmer (D.D. Palmer), a teacher and grocer turned magnetic healer, opened his office of magnetic healing in Davenport, Iowa in 1886. After nine years, D.D. Palmer gave the first chiropractic adjustment to Harvey Lillard, on September 18, 1895. According to D.D. Palmer, adjusting the spine is the cure for all diseases for the human race.

Palmer and his patient Harvey Lillard gave differing accounts of when and how Palmer began to experiment with spinal manipulation. Palmer recalled an incident in 1895 when he was investigating the medical history of a partially deaf man, Harvey Lillard. Lillard informed Palmer that while working in a cramped area seventeen years earlier, he felt a 'pop' in his back, and had been nearly deaf ever since. Palmer's examination found a sore lump which he believed was a spinal misalignment and a possible cause of Lillard's poor hearing. Palmer claimed to have corrected the misalignment and that Lillard's hearing improved.

Palmer said "there was nothing accidental about this, as it was accomplished with an object in view, and the expected result was obtained. There was nothing 'crude" about this adjustment; it was specific so much so that no chiropractor has equaled it."

However, this version was disputed by Lillard's daughter, Valdeenia Lillard Simons. She said that her father told her that he was telling jokes to a friend in the hall outside Palmer's office and, Palmer, who had been reading, joined them. When Lillard reached the punch line, Palmer, laughing heartily, slapped Lillard on the back with the hand holding the heavy book he had been reading. A few days later, Lillard told Palmer that his hearing seemed better. Palmer then decided to explore manipulation as an expansion of his magnetic healing practice. Simons said "the compact was that if they can make [something of] it, then they both would share. But, it didn't happen."

Since D.D. Palmer's first claim of restoring hearing to Harvey Lillard, there has been controversy about whether a link actually could exist between the spinal adjustment and return of hearing. Critics asserted that a spinal adjustment cannot affect certain areas – like the brain – because the spinal nerves do not extend into the encephalon. Years later, V. Strang, D.C. illustrated several neurological explanations including the recognition that sympathetic nerves arising in the lateral horns of the upper thoracic levels of the spine form the upper cervical ganglion with postganglionic fibers ascending to supply, among other things, blood vessels of the brain, but still with no connection to hearing. Others, though, talked about vertebral subluxation.

Early growth

After the case of Harvey Lillard, Palmer stated: "I had a case of heart trouble which was not improving. I examined the spine and found a displaced vertebra pressing against the nerves which innervate the heart. I adjusted the vertebra and gave immediate relief – nothing "accidental" or "crude" about this. Then I began to reason if two diseases, so dissimilar as deafness and heart trouble, came from impingement, a pressure on nerves, were not other disease due to a similar cause? Thus the science (knowledge) and art (adjusting) of Chiropractic were formed at that time."

D.D. Palmer asked a patient and friend, Rev. Samuel Weed, to help him name his discovery. He suggested combining the Greek words cheiros and praktikos (meaning "done by hand") to describe Palmer's treatment method, creating the term "chiropractic." D.D. initially hoped to keep his discovery a family secret, but in 1896 he added a school to his magnetic healing infirmary, and began to teach others his method. It would become known as Palmer School of Chiropractic (PSC, now Palmer College of Chiropractic). Among the first graduates were Andrew P. Davis MD, DO, William A. Seally, MD, B.J. Palmer (D.D.'s son), Solon M. Langworthy, John Howard, and Shegataro Morikubo. Langworthy moved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa and opened the second chiropractic school in 1903, the American School of Chiropractic & Nature Cure (ASC & NC), combining it with what would become naturopathic cures and osteopathy. D.D. Palmer, who was not interested in mixing chiropractic with other cures, turned down an offer to be a partner.

D.D. Palmer established a magnetic healing facility in Davenport, Iowa, styling himself ‘doctor’. Not everyone was convinced, as a local paper in 1894 wrote about him: "A crank on magnetism has a crazy notion that he can cure the sick and crippled with his magnetic hands. His victims are the weak-minded, ignorant and superstitious, those foolish people who have been sick for years and have become tired of the regular physician and want health by the short-cut method…he has certainly profited by the ignorance of his victims…His increase in business shows what can be done in Davenport, even by a quack."

Changing political and healthcare environment

The early 19th century had seen the rise of patent medicine and the nostrum remedium trade. Although some remedies were sold through doctors of medicine, most were sold directly to consumers by lay people, some of whom used questionable advertising claims. The addictive, and sometimes toxic, effects of some remedies, especially morphine and mercury-based cures (known as quicksilver or quacksilber in German), prompted the popular rise of less dangerous alternatives, such as homeopathy and eclectic medicine. In the mid-19th century, as germ theory began to replace the metaphysical causes of disease, the search for invisible microbes required the world to embrace the scientific method as a way to discover the cause of disease.

In the U.S., licensing for healthcare professionals had all but vanished around the time of the Civil War, leaving the profession open to anyone who felt inclined to become a physician; the market alone determined who would prove successful and who would not. Medical schools were plentiful, inexpensive and mostly privately owned. With free entry into the profession, and education in medicine cheap and available, many men entered practice, leading to an overabundance of practitioners which drove down the individual physician's income. In 1847, the American Medical Association (AMA) was formed and established higher standards for preliminary medical education and for the MD. At the time, most medical practitioners were unable to meet the stringent standards, so a "grandfather clause" was included. The effect was to limit the number of new practitioners.

In 1849, the AMA established a board to analyze quack remedies and nostrums and to enlighten the public about their nature and their dangers. Relationships were developed with pharmaceutical companies in an effort to curb the patent medicine crisis and consolidate the patient base around the medical doctor. By the turn of the 20th century, the AMA had created a Committee on National Legislation to represent the AMA in Washington and re-organized as the national organization of state and local associations. Intense political pressure by the AMA resulted in unlimited and unrestricted licensing only for medical physicians that were trained in AMA-endorsed colleges. By 1901, state medical boards were created in almost every state, requiring licentiates to provide a diploma from an AMA-approved medical college. By 1910, the AMA was a powerful force; this was the beginning of organized medicine.

In 1880, the teaching profession had begun significant changes as well. Advances in chemistry and science in Germany created strong incentives to create markets for their new products. By 1895, the new "Kulturopolitik" ideology of "First teach them; then sell them" had begun creating the political pressure necessary to improve teaching in science and math in schools and colleges in the US. The medical schools were the first to suffer the attack; they were ridiculed as obsolete – inadequate – and inefficient. The crisis attracted the attention of some of the world's richest men. In 1901, John D. Rockefeller created the "Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research". By 1906, the AMA's Council on Medical Education had created a list of unacceptable schools. In 1910, the Flexner Report, financed by the Carnegie Foundation, closed hundreds of private medical and homeopathic schools and named Johns Hopkins as the model school. The AMA had created the nonprofit, federally subsidized university hospital setting as the new teaching facility of the medical profession, effectively gaining control of all federal healthcare research and student aid.

Osteopathic medicine vs chiropractic medicine

In 1870 Palmer was '"probably" a student of metaphysics, became a student of science in 1890 while practicing magnetic healing and after "discovering" chiropractic in 1895 attempted to merge science and metaphysics. In 1896, D.D. Palmer's first descriptions and underlying philosophy of chiropractic were strikingly similar to Andrew Still's principles of osteopathy established a decade earlier. Both described the body as a "machine" whose parts could be manipulated to produce a drugless cure. Both professed the use of spinal manipulation on joint dysfunction to improve health; chiropractors dubbed this manipulable lesion "subluxation" which interfered with the nervous system. Palmer drew further distinctions by noting that he was the first to use short-lever manipulative techniques using the spinous process and transverse processes as mechanical levers to spinal dysfunction/subluxation. Soon after, osteopaths began an American wide campaign proclaimed that chiropractic was a bastardized form of osteopathy and sought licensure to differentiate themselves. Although Palmer initially denied being trained by osteopathic medicine founder A.T. Still, in 1899 in papers held at the Palmer College of Chiropractic he wrote:

"Some years ago I took an expensive course in Electropathy, Cranial Diagnosis, Hydrotherapy, Facial Diagnosis. Later I took Osteopathy [which] gave me such a measure of confidence as to almost feel it unnecessary to seek other sciences for the mastery of curable disease. Having been assured that the underlying philosophy of chiropractic is the same as that of osteopathy...Chiropractic is osteopathy gone to seed."

Medicine vs chiropractic

Since its inception, chiropractic was controversial amongst the established medical orthodoxy. Chiropractors were jailed for "practicing medicine without a license" which the profession designed a legal and political defence against prosecution arguing that chiropractic was "separate and distinct from medicine", asserting that chiropractors "analyzed" rather than "diagnosed", and "adjusted" subluxations rather than "treated" disease. In 1963 the American Medical Association formed a "Committee on Quackery" designed to "contain and eliminate" the chiropractic profession. In 1966, the AMA referred to chiropractic as an "unscientific cult" and until 1980 and held that it was unethical for medical doctors to associate themselves with "unscientific practitioners". Then in 1987, the AMA was found to have engaged in an unlawful conspiracy in restraint of trade "to contain and eliminate the chiropractic profession." In the 1980s, spinal manipulation gained mainstream recognition and has spurred ongoing collaboration into research of manipulative therapies and models of delivery of chiropractic care for musculoskeletal conditions in the mainstream healthcare sector.

In September 1899, a medical doctor in Davenport named Heinrich Matthey started a campaign against drugless healers in Iowa, demanding a change in the statute to prevent drugless healers from practicing in the state and claiming that health education could no longer be entrusted to anyone but doctors of medicine. Osteopathic schools across the country responded by developing a program of college inspection and accreditation. D.D. Palmer, whose school had just graduated its 7th student, insisted that his techniques did not need the same courses or license as medicine, as his graduates did not prescribe drugs or evaluate blood or urine. In 1901, D.D. was charged with misrepresenting a course in chiropractic which was not a real science. He persisted in his strong stance against licensure, citing freedom of choice as his cause. He was arrested twice more by 1906, and although he contended that he was not practicing medicine, he was convicted for professing he could cure disease without a license in medicine or osteopathy. Dr Solon Langworthy, who continued to mix chiropractic at the ASC&NC, took a different route for chiropractic. He improved classrooms and provided a curriculum of study instead of the single course. He narrowed the scope of chiropractic to the treatment of the spine and nervous system, leaving blood work to the osteopath, and began to refer to the brain as the "life force". He was the first to use the word subluxation to describe the misalignment that narrowed the "spinal windows" (or intervertebral foramina) and interrupted the nerve energy. In 1906, Langworthy published the first book on chiropractic, Modernized Chiropractic" – "Special Philosophy – A Distinct System. He brought chiropractic into the scientific arena.

B.J. Palmer re-develops chiropractic

D.D. Palmer's student and son, B.J. Palmer, assumed control of the Palmer School in 1906, and promoted professionalism and formal training in chiropractic, expanding enrollment to a peak of above 1,000 students in the early 1920s. Chiropractic leaders of the time often invoked religious imagery, and B.J. seriously considered declaring chiropractic a religion, deciding against this partly to avoid confusion with Christian Science. B.J. also worked to overcome chiropractic's initial resistance to the use of medical technology, by accepting diagnostic technology such as spinal X-rays (which he called spinography) in 1910.

Prosecution of DCs for unlicensed practice after the conviction of D.D. Palmer and a previous charge against B.J. Palmer resulted in B.J. and several Palmer graduates creating the Universal Chiropractic Association (UCA). Its initial purpose was to protect its members by covering their legal expenses should they get arrested. Its first case came in 1907, when Shegataro Morikubo DC of Wisconsin was charged with unlicensed practice of osteopathy. It was a test of the new osteopathic law. In an ironic twist, using mixer Langworthy's book Modernized Chiropractic, attorney Tom Morris legally differentiated chiropractic from osteopathy by the differences in the philosophy of chiropractic's "supremacy of the nerve" and osteopathy's "supremacy of the artery". Morikubo was freed, and the victory reshaped the development of the chiropractic profession, which then marketed itself as a science, an art and a philosophy, and B.J. Palmer became the "Philosopher of Chiropractic".

B.J. Palmer believed that their chiropractic school was founded on "…a business, not a professional basis. We manufacture chiropractors. We teach them the idea and then we show them how to sell it". The next 15 years saw the opening of 30 more chiropractic schools, including John Howard's National School of Chiropractic (now the National University of Health Sciences) that moved to Chicago, Illinois. Each school attempted to develop its own identity, while B.J. Palmer continued to develop the philosophy behind his father's discovery. Fueled by the persistent and provocative advertising of recent chiropractic graduates, local medical communities, who had the power of the state at their disposal, immediately had them arrested. There were only 12,000 practicing chiropractors with more than 15,000 prosecutions for practicing medicine without a license in the first 30 years. D.D. Palmer was also jailed for practicing medicine without a license. Tom Morris and his partner, Fred Hartwell, were able to successfully defend 80% through the UCA. B.J. would later note about those battles:

"We are always mindful of those early days when UCA...used various expedients to defeat medical court prosecutions. We legally squirmed this way and that, here and there. We did not diagnose, treat, or cure disease. We analyzed, adjusted cause, and Innate in patient cured. All were professional matters of fact in science, therefore justifiable in legal use to defeat medical trials and convictions."

His influence over the next several years further divided the mixers, or those who mixed chiropractic with other cures, from the straights who practiced chiropractic by itself.

D.D. Palmer's last years

While B.J. worked to protect and develop chiropractic around the Palmer school, D.D. Palmer continued to develop his techniques from Oregon. In 1910, he theorized that nerves control health.

Before his sudden and controversial death in 1913, D.D. Palmer often voiced concern for B.J. Palmer's management of chiropractic. He challenged B.J.'s methods and philosophy and made every effort to regain control of chiropractic. He repudiated his earlier theory that vertebral subluxations caused pinched nerves in the intervertebral spaces in favor of subluxations causing altered nerve vibration, either too tense or too slack, affecting the tone(health) of the end organ and noted, "A subluxated vertebra . . . is the cause of 95 percent of all diseases. . . . The other five percent is caused by displaced joints other than those of the vertebral column."

During the long-fought battle for licensure in California, in 1911 he wrote of his philosophy for chiropractic, and hinted at his plan for the legal defense of chiropractic.

In "The Chiropractor", published posthumously in 1914, D.D. Palmer revisits the topic of chiropractic as religion, quoting F.W. Carlin as saying "The Religion of Chiropractic is absurd". He continued: "I fully agree with Dr. Carlin. To say or think that the science, art and philosophy of Chiropractic, or that Chiropractic, the three combined, has a religion, is really absurd and ridiculous".

The 2008 book Trick or Treatment states that in 1913 B.J. Palmer ran over his father, D.D. Palmer, at a homecoming parade for the Palmer School of Chiropractic. Weeks later D.D. Palmer died. The official cause of death was recorded as typhoid. The book Trick or Treatment indicated "it seems more likely that his death was a direct result of injuries caused by his son." There was speculation that it was not an accident, but instead a case of patricide. Chiropractic historian Joseph C. Keating, Jr. has described the attempted patricide of D.D. Palmer as a "myth" and "absurd on its face" and cites an eyewitness who recalled that DD was not struck by BJ's car, but rather, had stumbled. He also says that "Joy Loban, DC, executor of DD's estate, voluntarily withdrew a civil suit claiming damages against B.J. Palmer, and that several grand juries repeatedly refused to bring criminal charges against the son." They had become bitter rivals over the leadership of chiropractic. B.J. Palmer resented his father for the way he treated his family, stating that his father beat three of his children with straps and was so much involved in chiropractic that he hardly knew his children. D. D. claimed that his son B. J. struck him with his car.

Straights versus mixers

State laws to regulate and protect chiropractic practice were introduced in all fifty states in the United States. Medical Examining Boards worked to keep all healthcare practices under their legal control, but an internal struggle among DC's on how to structure the laws complicated the process. Initially, the UCA, led by B.J. Palmer, opposed state licensure altogether. Palmer feared that such regulation would lead to MD physician control of the profession. The UCA eventually caved in, but B.J. remained strong in the opinion that examining boards should be composed exclusively of chiropractors (not mixers), and the educational standards to be adhered to were the same as the Palmer School. A "Model Bill" was drafted in 1922 to present to all states that did not yet have a law. They warned state associations to purge their mixing members or face competition by the formation of a new "straight" association in their state.

Although D.D. and B.J. were "straight" and disdained the use of instruments, some early chiropractors, whom B.J. scornfully called "mixers", advocated the use of instruments. In 1910 B.J. changed course and endorsed X-rays as necessary for diagnosis; this resulted in a significant exodus from the Palmer School of the more conservative faculty and students.

The mixer camp grew until by 1924 B.J. estimated that only 3,000 of the U.S.'s 25,000 chiropractors remained straight. That year, B.J.'s invention and promotion of the neurocalometer, a temperature-sensing device, was highly controversial among B.J.'s fellow straights. By the 1930s chiropractic was the largest alternative healing profession in the U.S.

Mixers, disturbed by the edicts of the PSC having so much influence in their daily practice, created the American Chiropractic Association (one of the early precursors to today's ACA). Though born out of necessity to defend against the UCA attacks, the ACA's stated purposes were to advance education and research for chiropractic. Its growth was initially stunted by its resolution to recognize physio-therapy and other modalities as pertaining to chiropractic. What growth did occur was credited to its second president, Frank R. Margetts, DC with support from his alma mater, National Chiropractic College. He insisted that no college administrator could hold an official position in the association, giving doctors in the field a collective voice. But a disagreement within the UCA in 1924 turned the tide for the ACA. B.J. was still working to purge mixers from practicing chiropractic, and he saw a new invention by Dossa D. Evans, the "Neurocalometer" (NCM), as the answer to all of straight chiropractic's (and particularly PSC's) legal and financial problems. As the owner of the patent on the NCM, he planned to limit the number of NCMs to 5000 and lease them only to graduates of the Palmer related schools who were members of the UCA. He then claimed that the NCM was the only way to accurately locate subluxations, preventing over 20,000 mixers from being able to defend their method of practice.

There was an immediate uproar among practicing DCs. Even Tom Moore, B.J.'s long-time ally and president of the UCA, displayed his dismay by resigning (though he was later reinstated). B.J. reluctantly resigned as treasurer, ending his relationship with the UCA. B.J. moved on to form the Chiropractic Health Bureau (today's ICA), along with his staunchest supporters and Fred Hartwell (Tom Moore's partner) acting as council. Membership in the UCA dropped while the ACA membership rose. In 1930, the ACA and UCA joined to form the National Chiropractic Association (NCA). The NCA developed a Committee on Educational Standards (CES), making John J. Nugent DC responsible for raising educational standards for the profession. The years of consolidation or closing of unacceptable schools while developing the new standards earned Nugent the nickname "Chiropractic's Abraham Flexner" from his admirers and "Chiropractic's Anti-christ" from his adversaries. The CES evolved into today's Council on Chiropractic Education (CCE), and was granted the status of chiropractic's accrediting body by the US Department of Education. Nugent was also instrumental in the Chiropractic Research Foundation (CRF), today's Foundation for Chiropractic Education and Research (FCER). The differences in state laws that exist today can be traced back to these early legal struggles.

Chiropractic struggled with survival and identity during its formative years, including internal struggles between its leaders and colleges. Chiropractic is rooted in mystical concepts, leading to internal conflicts between straights and mixers which continue to this day. Objective Straight chiropractors, who are an offshoot of straights, only focus on the correction of chiropractic vertebral subluxations while traditional straights claim that chiropractic adjustments are a plausible treatment for a wide range of diseases. Reform chiropractors are an evidence-based offshoot of mixers who reject traditional Palmer philosophy and tend not to use alternative medicine methods. From 1984 to about 2008, some of them were organized as the National Association for Chiropractic Medicine, an organization which met strong opposition from the profession and finally ceased to exist.

Debate

There is continued disagreement over what "innate" and "subluxation" mean to chiropractic. Some chiropractors believe in Innate Intelligence, a faith-based, unscientific belief which has been a source of derision for chiropractors. Chiropractors historically were strongly opposed to vaccination based on their belief that all diseases were traceable to causes in the spine, and therefore could not be affected by vaccines; D.D. Palmer wrote, "It is the very height of absurdity to strive to 'protect' any person from smallpox or any other malady by inoculating them with a filthy animal poison." There is significant disagreement within the chiropractic community concerning vaccination, one of the most cost-effective public health interventions available. Early opposition to water fluoridation included chiropractors in the U.S. Some chiropractors oppose water fluoridation as being incompatible with chiropractic philosophy and an infringement of personal freedom. Although most chiropractic writings on vaccination focus on its negative aspects, antivaccination sentiment is espoused by what appears to be a minority of chiropractors. Recently, other chiropractors have actively promoted fluoridation, and several chiropractic organizations have endorsed scientific principles of public health.

AMA plans to eliminate chiropractic

On November 2, 1963, the AMA Board of Regents created the "Committee on Quackery" with the goals of first containing, and then eliminating chiropractic. H. Doyle Taylor, the Director of the AMA Department of Investigation and Secretary of the Committee on Quackery, outlined the steps needed:

to ensure that Medicare should not cover chiropractic
to ensure that the U.S. Office of Education should not recognize or list a chiropractic accrediting agency
to encourage continued separation of the two national associations
to encourage state medical societies to take the initiative in their state legislatures in regard to legislation that might affect the practice of chiropractic.

The AMA worked to spread information designed to discredit chiropractic through public media and the scientific literature.

The longstanding feud between chiropractors and medical doctors continued for decades. The AMA labeled chiropractic an "unscientific cult" in 1966, and until 1980 held that it was unethical for medical doctors to associate with "unscientific practitioners". In 1975, an anonymous AMA insider describing himself as a disgruntled AMA staffer and identifying himself as "Sore Throat" released information concerning the Committee on Quackery and its proposed methods to eliminate chiropractic to the press. These papers were the basis of Wilk et al. vs. AMA, the suit brought by Chester Wilk, D.C., of Illinois and five co-plaintiffs against the AMA and several co-defendants. After two trials, on September 25, 1987, Getzendanner issued her opinion that the AMA had violated Section 1, but not 2, of the Sherman Act, and that it had engaged in an unlawful conspiracy in restraint of trade "to contain and eliminate the chiropractic profession." (Wilk v. American Medical Ass'n, 671 F. Supp. 1465, N.D. Ill. 1987).

Movement toward scientific reform

Research to test chiropractic theories began in 1935 with the B.J. Palmer Research Clinic at the Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa. The clinic was organized into two divisions – a medical division and a chiropractic division. The medical division contained all the standard medical tests of the time and was used to establish a medical diagnosis of a patient's condition before the patient received treatment. The chiropractic division administered the treatment which included passive therapies, chiropractic adjustments and physical rehabilitation for the various conditions diagnosed. Research continued in the B.J. Palmer research clinic until B.J. Palmer's death in 1961 and the results and findings of these patient cases were the substance of B.J. Palmer's publishing over this 30-year time-period.

By the late 1950s, healthcare in the US had been transformed: the discovery of penicillin and the development of the polio vaccine was restoring hope to millions, and the homeopathic physician had all but vanished as a result of "antiquackery" efforts of the medical trust and leadership efforts of the AMA. B.J. reduced the adjustment to HIO (Hole In One – the adjustment of only the atlas), while mixers continued to add and refine new proprietary techniques to find and reduce subluxations and improve health. Osteopathy in the US developed in parallel to medicine and dropped its reliance on spinal manipulation to treat illness. A similar reform movement began within chiropractic: shortly after the death of B.J. in 1961, a second-generation chiropractor, Samuel Homola, wrote extensively on the subject of limiting the use of spinal manipulation, proposing that chiropractic as a medical specialty should focus on conservative care of musculoskeletal conditions. His sentiments echoed those of the NCA chairman of the board (C.O. Watkins DC) twenty years earlier: "If we will not develop a scientific organization to test our own methods, organized medicine will usurp our privilege. When it discovers a method of value, medical science will adopt it and incorporate it into scientific medical practice." Homola's membership in the newly formed ACA was not renewed, and his position was rejected by both straight and mixer associations.

Chiropractic is classified as a field of pseudomedicine on account of its esoteric origins. Serious research to test chiropractic theories did not begin until the 1970s, and is continuing to be hampered by antiscientific and pseudoscientific ideas that sustained the profession in its long battle with organized medicine. In 1975, the National Institutes of Health brought chiropractors, osteopaths, medical doctors and PhD scientists together at a conference on spinal manipulation to develop strategies to study the effects of spinal manipulation. In 1978, the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics (JMPT) was launched, and in 1981 it was included in the National Library of Medicine's Index Medicus. Joseph C. Keating, Jr. dates the birth of chiropractic as a science to a 1983 commentary in the JMPT entitled "Notes from the (chiropractic college) underground" in which Kenneth F. DeBoer, then an instructor in basic science at Palmer College in Iowa, revealed the power of a scholarly journal (JMPT) to empower faculty at the chiropractic schools. DeBoer's opinion piece demonstrated the faculty's authority to challenge the status quo, to publicly address relevant, albeit sensitive, issues related to research, training and skepticism at chiropractic colleges, and to produce "cultural change" within the chiropractic schools so as to increase research and professional standards. It was a rallying call for chiropractic scientists and scholars. By the mid-1990s there was a growing scholarly interest in chiropractic, which helped efforts to improve service quality and establish clinical guidelines that recommended manual therapies for acute low back pain.

In 2008, Simon Singh was sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) for criticizing their activities in a column in The Guardian. A preliminary hearing took place at the Royal Courts of Justice in front of Justice David Eady. The judge held that merely using the phrase "happily promotes bogus treatments" meant that he was stating, as a matter of fact, that the British Chiropractic Association was being consciously dishonest in promoting chiropractic for treating the children's ailments in question. An editorial in Nature has suggested that the BCA may be trying to suppress debate and that this use of British libel law is a burden on the right to freedom of expression, which is protected by the European Convention on Human Rights. The libel case ended with the BCA withdrawing its suit in 2010.

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Wednesday, August 30, 2023

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