Religiosity and intelligence

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

The study of religiosity and intelligence explores the link between religiosity and intelligence or educational level (by country and on the individual level). Religiosity and intelligence are both complex topics that include diverse variables, and the interactions among those variables are not always well understood. For instance, intelligence is often defined differently by different researchers; also, all scores from intelligence tests are only estimates of intelligence, because one cannot achieve concrete measurements of intelligence (as one would of mass or distance) due to the concept’s abstract nature. Religiosity is also complex, in that it involves wide variations of interactions of religious beliefs, practices, behaviors, and affiliations, across a diverse array of cultures.

A meta-analysis and an updated analysis by the same research group have found a measurable negative correlation between intelligence quotient (IQ) and religiosity. The correlation was suggested to be a result of nonconformity, more cognitive and less intuitive thinking styles among the less religious, and less of a need for religion as a coping mechanism. Another study showed a correlation between national average IQ and levels of atheism in society. However, other studies have questioned these explanations and correlations and have countered that any correlations are due to a complex range of social, economic, educational and historical factors, which interact with religion and IQ in different ways. Less developed and poorer countries tend to be more religious, perhaps because religions play a more active social, moral and cultural role in those countries.

One study suggests that intuitive thinking may be one out of many sources that affect levels of religiosity and that analytical thinking may be one out of many sources that affect disbelief. However, others who have reviewed studies on analytic thinking and nonbelievers suggest that analytical thinking does not imply better reflection on religious matters or disbelief.

A global study on educational attainment found that Jews, Christians, religiously unaffiliated persons, and Buddhists have, on average, higher levels of education than the global average. Numerous factors affect both educational attainment and religiosity.

Definitions and issues

Intelligence

See also: Intelligence quotient and Intelligence

The definitions of intelligence are controversial since at least 70 definitions have been found among diverse fields of research. Some groups of psychologists have suggested the following definitions:

From "Mainstream Science on Intelligence" (1994), an op-ed statement in the Wall Street Journal signed by fifty-two researchers (out of 131 total invited to sign).

A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings—"catching on," "making sense" of things, or "figuring out" what to do.

From "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns" (1995), a report published by the Board of Scientific Affairs of the American Psychological Association:

Individuals differ from one another in their ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking thought. Although these individual differences can be substantial, they are never entirely consistent: a given person's intellectual performance will vary on different occasions, in different domains, as judged by different criteria. Concepts of "intelligence" are attempts to clarify and organize this complex set of phenomena. Although considerable clarity has been achieved in some areas, no such conceptualization has yet answered all the important questions, and none commands universal assent. Indeed, when two dozen prominent theorists were recently asked to define intelligence, they gave two dozen, somewhat different, definitions.

Intelligence is a property of the mind that encompasses many related abilities, such as the capacities to reason, to plan, to solve problems, to think abstractly, to comprehend ideas, to use language, and to learn. There are several ways to more specifically define intelligence. In some cases, intelligence may include traits such as creativity, personality, character, knowledge, or wisdom. However, some psychologists prefer not to include these traits in the definition of intelligence.

A widely researched index or classification of intelligence among scientists is intelligence quotient (IQ). IQ is a summary index, calculated by testing individuals' abilities in a variety of tasks and producing a composite score to represent overall ability, e.g., Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. It is used to predict educational outcomes and other variables of interest.

Others have attempted to measure intelligence indirectly by looking at individuals' or group's educational attainment, although this risks bias from other demographic factors, such as age, income, gender and cultural background, all of which can affect educational attainment.

Dissatisfaction with traditional IQ tests has led to the development of alternative theories. In 1983, Howard Gardner proposed the theory of multiple intelligences, which broadens the conventional definition of intelligence, to include logical, linguistic, spatial, musical, kinesthetic, naturalist, intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences. He chose not to include spiritual intelligence amongst his "intelligences" due to the challenge of codifying quantifiable scientific criteria, but suggested an "existential intelligence" as viable.

Religiosity

See also: Religion, Irreligion, Religiosity, and Psychology of religion

The term religiosity refers to degrees of religious behaviour, belief, or spirituality. The measurement of religiosity is hampered by the difficulties involved in defining what is meant by the term. Numerous studies have explored the different components of religiosity, with most finding some distinction between religious beliefs/doctrine, religious practice, and spirituality. Studies can measure religious practice by counting attendance at religious services, religious beliefs/doctrine by asking a few doctrinal questions, and spirituality by asking respondents about their sense of oneness with the divine or through detailed standardized measurements. When religiosity is measured, it is important to specify which aspects of religiosity are referred to.

According to Mark Chaves, decades of anthropological, sociological, and psychological research have established that "religious congruence" (the assumption that religious beliefs and values are tightly integrated in an individual's mind or that religious practices and behaviors follow directly from religious beliefs or that religious beliefs are chronologically linear and stable across different contexts) is actually rare. People’s religious ideas are fragmented, loosely connected, and context-dependent, as in all other domains of culture and in life. The beliefs, affiliations, and behaviors of any individual are complex activities that have many sources including culture. As examples of religious incongruence he notes, "Observant Jews may not believe what they say in their Sabbath prayers. Christian ministers may not believe in God. And people who regularly dance for rain don’t do it in the dry season."

Demographic studies often show wide diversity of religious beliefs, belonging, and practices in both religious and non-religious populations. For instance, out of Americans who are not religious and not seeking religion, 68% believe in God, 12% are atheists, and 17% are agnostics; as for self-identification of religiosity, 18% consider themselves religious, 37% consider themselves spiritual but not religious, and 42% consider themselves neither spiritual nor religious, while 21% pray every day and 24% pray once a month. Global studies on religion also show diversity.

Religion and belief in gods are not necessarily synonymous since nontheistic religions exist including within traditions like Hinduism and Christianity. According to anthropologist Jack David Eller, "atheism is quite a common position, even within religion" and that "surprisingly, atheism is not the opposite or lack, let alone the enemy, of religion but is the most common form of religion."

Studies comparing religious belief and IQ

See also: Nations and intelligence

In a 2013 meta-analysis of 63 studies, led by professor Miron Zuckerman, a correlation of -.20 to -.25 between religiosity and IQ was particularly strong when assessing beliefs (which in their view reflects intrinsic religiosity), but the negative effects were less defined when behavioral aspects of religion (such as church-going) were examined. They note limitations on this since viewing intrinsic religiosity as being about religious beliefs represents American Protestantism more than Judaism or Catholicism, both of which see behavior as just as important as religious beliefs. They also noted that the available data did not allow adequate consideration of the role of religion type and of culture in assessing the relationship between religion and intelligence. Most of the studies reviewed were American and 87% of participants in those studies were from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. They noted, "Clearly, the present results are limited to Western societies." The meta-analysis discussed three possible explanations: First, intelligent people are less likely to conform and, thus, are more likely to resist religious dogma, although this theory was contradicted in mostly atheist societies such as the Scandinavian populations, where the religiosity-IQ relationship still existed. Second, intelligent people tend to adopt an analytic (as opposed to intuitive) thinking style, which has been shown to undermine religious beliefs. Third, Intelligent people may have less need for religious beliefs and practices, as some of the functions of religiosity can be given by intelligence instead. Such functions include the presentation of a sense that the world is orderly and predictable, a sense of personal control and self-regulation and a sense of enhancing self-esteem and belongingness.

However, a 2016 re-analysis of the Zuckerman et al study, found that the negative intelligence-religiosity associations were weaker and less generalizable across time, space, samples, measures, and levels of analysis, but still robust. For example, the negative intelligence–religiosity association was insignificant with samples using men, pre-college participants, and taking into account grade point average. When other variables like education and quality of human conditions were taken into account, positive relation between IQ and disbelief in God was reduced. According to Dutton and Van der Linden, the re-analysis had controls that were too strict (life quality index and proximity of countries) and also some of the samples used problematic proxies of religiosity, which took away from the variance in the correlations. As such, the reduction of significance in the negative correlation likely reflected a sample anomaly. They also did observe that the "weak but significant" correlation of -.20 on intelligence and religiosity from the Zuckerman study was also found when comparing intelligence with other variables like education and income.

Researcher Helmuth Nyborg and Richard Lynn, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Ulster, compared belief in God and IQs. Using data from a U.S. study of 6,825 adolescents, the authors found that the average IQ of atheists was 6 points higher than the average IQ of non-atheists. The authors also investigated the link between belief in a god and average national IQs in 137 countries. The authors reported a correlation of 0.60 between atheism rates and level of intelligence, which was determined to be "highly statistically significant". ('Belief in a god' is not identical to 'religiosity.' Some nations have high proportions of people who do not believe in a god, but who may nevertheless be highly religious, following non-theistic belief systems such as Buddhism or Taoism.)

The Lynn et al. paper findings were discussed by Professor Gordon Lynch, from London's Birkbeck College, who expressed concern that the study failed to take into account a complex range of social, economic and historical factors, each of which has been shown to interact with religion and IQ in different ways. Gallup surveys, for example, have found that the world's poorest countries are consistently the most religious, perhaps because religion plays a more functional role (helping people cope) in poorer nations. Even at the scale of the individual, IQ may not directly cause more disbelief in gods. Dr. David Hardman of London Metropolitan University says: "It is very difficult to conduct true experiments that would explicate a causal relationship between IQ and religious belief." He adds that other studies do nevertheless correlate IQ with being willing or able to question beliefs.

In a sample of 2307 adults in the US., IQ was found to negatively correlate with self reports of religious identification, private practice or religion, mindfulness, religious support, and fundamentalism, but not spirituality. The relationships were relatively unchanged after controlling for personality, education, age, and gender, and were typically modest. The study was limited only to Christian denominations.

According to biopsychologist Nigel Barber, the differences in national IQ are better explained by social, environmental, and wealth conditions than by levels of religiosity. He acknowledges that highly intelligent people have been both religious and nonreligious. He notes that countries with more wealth and better resources tend to have higher levels of non-theists and countries that have less wealth and resources tend to have fewer non-theists. For instance, countries that have poverty, low urbanization, lower levels of education, less exposure to electronic media that increase intelligence, higher incidence of diseases that impair brain function, low birth weights, child malnutrition, and poor control of pollutants like lead have more factors that reduce brain and IQ development than do wealthier or more developed countries.

A critical review of the research on intelligence and religiosity by Sickles et al. observed that conclusions vary widely in the literature because most studies use inconsistent and poor measures for both religiosity and intelligence. Furthermore, they noted intelligence differences seen between people of varying religious beliefs and non-theists is most likely the result of educational differences that are in turn the result of holding fundamentalist religious beliefs rather than the result of innate differences in intelligence between them.

Studies examining theistic and atheistic cognitive style

The idea that analytical thinking makes one less likely to be religious is an idea supported by some studies on this issue, Harvard researchers found evidence suggesting that all religious beliefs become more confident when participants are thinking intuitively (atheists and theists each become more convinced). Thus reflective thinking generally tends to create more qualified, doubted belief.

The study found that participants who tended to think more reflectively were less likely to believe in a god. Reflective thinking was further correlated with greater changes in beliefs since childhood: these changes were towards atheism for the most reflective participants, and towards greater belief in a god for the most intuitive thinkers. The study controlled for personality differences and cognitive ability, suggesting the differences were due to thinking styles – not simply IQ or raw cognitive ability. An experiment in the study found that participants moved towards greater belief in a god after writing essays about how intuition yielded a right answer or reflection yielded a wrong answer (and conversely, towards atheism if primed to think about either a failure of intuition or success of reflection). The authors say it is all evidence that a relevant factor in religious belief is thinking style. The authors add that, even if intuitive thinking tends to increase belief in a god, "it does not follow that reliance on intuition is always irrational or unjustified."

A study by Gervais and Norenzayan reached similar conclusions that intuitive thinking tended to increase intrinsic religiosity, intuitive religious belief and belief in supernatural entities. They also added a causative element, finding that subtly triggering analytic thinking can increase religious disbelief. They concluded that "Combined, these studies indicate that analytic processing is one factor (presumably among several) that promotes religious disbelief." While these studies linked religious disbelief to analytical rather than intuitive thinking, they urged caution in the interpretation of these results, noting that they were not judging the relative merits of analytic and intuitive thinking in promoting optimal decision making, or the merits or validity of religiosity as a whole.

A 2017 study re-analyzed the relationship between intuitive and analytical thinking and its correlation with supernatural belief among three measurements (Pilgrimage setting, supernatural attribution, brain stimulation) and found no significant correlation.

Reviewing psychological studies on atheists, Miguel Farias noted that studies concluding that analytical thinking leads to lower religious belief "do not imply that atheists are more conscious or reflective of their own beliefs, or that atheism is the outcome of a conscious refutation of previously held religious beliefs" since they too have variant beliefs such as in conspiracy theories of the naturalistic variety. He notes that studies on deconversion indicate that a greater proportion of people who leave religion do so for motivational rather than rational reasons, and the majority of deconversions occur in adolescence and young adulthood when one is emotionally volatile. Furthermore, he notes that atheists are indistinguishable from New Age individuals or Gnostics since there are commonalities such as being individualistic, non-conformist, liberal, and valuing hedonism and sensation.

Concerning the cognitive science studies on atheists, Johnathan Lanman notes that there are implicit and explicit beliefs which vary among individuals. An individual's atheism and theism may be related to the amount of "credibility enhancing displays" (CRED) one experiences in that those who are exposed more to theistic CRED will likely be theist and those who have less exposure to theistic CRED will likely be atheists.

Neurological research on mechanisms of belief and non-belief, using Christians and atheists as subjects, by Harris et al. have shown that the brain networks involved in evaluating the truthfulness of both religious and non religious statements are generally the same regardless of religiosity. However, the activity within these networks differed across the religiosity of statements, with the religious statements activating the insula and anterior cingulate cortex to a greater degree, and the non religious statements activating hippocampal and superior frontal regions to a greater degree. The areas associated with religious statements are generally associated with salient emotional processing, while areas associated with non religious statements are generally associated with memory. The association between the salience network and religious statements is congruent with the cognitive theory proposed by Boyer that the implausibility of religious propositions are offset by their salience. The same neural networks were active in both Christians and atheists even when dealing with "blasphemous statements" to each other's worldviews. Furthermore, it supports the idea that "intuition" and "reason" are not two separate and segregated activities but are intertwined in both theists and atheists.

Studies examining religiosity and emotional intelligence

A small 2004 study by Ellen Paek examined the extent to which religiosity (in which only Christians were surveyed), operationalized as religious orientation and religious behaviour, is related to the controversial idea of emotional intelligence (EI). The study examined the extent to which religious orientation and behavior were related to self-reported EI in 148 church-attending adult Christians. (Non-religious individuals were not part of the study.) The study found that the individuals' self-reported religious orientation was positively correlated with their perceiving themselves to have greater EI. While the number of religious group activities was positively associated with perceived EI, the number of years of church attendance was unrelated. Significant positive correlations were also found between level of religious commitment and perceived EI. Thus, the Christian volunteers were more likely to consider themselves emotionally intelligent if they spent more time in group activities and had more commitment to their beliefs.

Tischler, Biberman and McKeage warn that there is still ambiguity in the above concepts. In their 2002 article, entitled "Linking emotional intelligence, spirituality and workplace performance: Definitions, models and ideas for research", they reviewed literature on both EI and various aspect of spirituality. They found that both EI and spirituality appear to lead to similar attitudes, behaviors and skills, and that there often seems to be confusion, intersection and linking between the two constructs.

Recently, Łowicki and Zajenkowski investigated the potential associations between various aspects of religious belief and ability and trait EI. In their first study they found that ability EI was positively correlated with general level of belief in God or a higher power. Their next study, conducted among Polish Christians, replicated the previous result and revealed that both trait and ability EI were negatively related to extrinsic religious orientation and negative religious coping.

Studies exploring religiosity and educational attainment

Main article: Religiosity and education

The relationship between the level of religiosity and one's level of education has been a philosophical, as well as a scientific and political concern since the second half of the 20th century.

The parameters in this field are slightly different compared to those brought forward above: if the "level of religiosity" remains a concept which is difficult to determine scientifically, on the contrary, the "level of education" is, indeed, easy to compile, official data on this topic being publicly accessible to anyone in most countries.

Different studies available show contrasting conclusions. An analysis of World Values Survey data showed that in most countries, there is no significant relationship between education and religious attendance, with some differences between "Western" countries and former socialist countries, which the authors attribute to historical, political, and economic factors, not intelligence. Other studies have noted a positive relationship.

A 2016 Pew Center global study on religion and education around the world ranked Jews as the most educated (13.4 years of schooling) followed by Christians (9.3 years of schooling). The religiously unaffiliated—a category which includes atheists, agnostics and those who describe their religion as “nothing in particular”—ranked overall as the third most educated religious group (8.8 years of schooling) followed by Buddhists (7.9 years of schooling), Muslims (5.6 years of schooling), and Hindus (5.6 years of schooling). In the youngest age (25-34) group surveyed, Jews averaged 13.8 years of schooling, the unaffiliated group averaged 10.3 years of schooling, Christians averaged 9.9 years of schooling, Buddhists averaged 9.7 years of schooling, Hindus averaged 7.1 years of schooling, and Muslims averaged 6.7 years of schooling. 61% of Jews, 20% of Christians, 16% of the unaffiliated, 12% of Buddhists, 10% of Hindus, and 8% of Muslims have graduate and post-graduate degrees. The study observed that the probability of having a college degree in the U.S. is higher for all religious minorities surveyed (perhaps partly due to selective immigration policies that favor highly skilled applicants), including the unaffiliated group which ranks in the fifth place, being higher than the national average of 39%.

Romantic medicine

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romantic_medicine

Romantic medicine is part of the broader movement known as Romanticism, most predominant in the period 1800–1840, and involved both the cultural (humanities) and natural sciences, not to mention efforts to better understand man within a spiritual context ('spiritual science'). Romanticism in medicine was an integral part of Romanticism in science.

Romantic writers were far better read in medicine than we tend to remember: Byron consulted popular health manuals by Adair and Solomon; Coleridge read deeply in his physician, James Gillman's, library; Percy Shelley ordered Spallanzani's complete works and immersed himself in the vitalist controversy, while Mary Shelley read Gall and Spurzheim; Blake engraved plates for medical literature published by Joseph Johnson; and Keats, of course, was trained as a physician.

The impetus for Romantic ideas in medicine came from the Great Britain, and more specifically Scotland - John Hunter (1728–93) - and the idea of life as a principle not reducible to material constructs, and John Brown (1735–88), founder of the Brunonian system of medicine (see also, Romanticism in Scotland#Science). The nexus for Romantic Medicine was Germany, largely nurtured and guided by German natural scientific inquiries regarding the vital aspects of nature, such as that of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840) and his influential ideas regarding a life principle (Bildungstrieb), a formative drive (nisus formatives) as well as a philosophical tradition that emphasized the dynamic aspects of man and nature, and their essential relationship as part of a unity - German idealism and Naturphilosophie - all guided by Immanuel Kant's (1724–1804) challenge calling for critical inquiry as the basis for science.

The essence of romantic medicine was to overcome the deep crisis that Western medicine found itself in during the latter half of the 1700s by means of a science of life (pathology and physiology grounded in history) that went beyond the simple application of the method of the inertial sciences (physics and chemistry, grounded in mathematics) that had worked so well for inert nature, but was found wanting when applied to vital nature, but also a science of life that went beyond the idea of medicine as a subjective art largely to be left to individual practice. The Zeitgeist of Romantic medicine sought to unite the uneasy partnership of material natural science and subjective clinical practice to create a true scientific foundation for Western medicine (see also Romanticism and epistemology)

The question of life

The issue of life – what is life? – or the scientific inquiry and quest (questio) regarding vital nature was one that increasingly drew the attention of philosophers and scientists in the 1700s, following the great advances concerning the laws and principles of inert nature - the Copernican, Galilean and Newtonian revolutions in celestial and earthly mechanics - astronomy and physics. With great confidence and optimism, philosophy and science turned to the mystery of life, or rather, that of health - how to restore and maintain it. Those most immediately drawn to this field were those who had some concern with health issues, physicians in particular. Thus, a natural alliance formed between natural philosophy and science on the one hand and medicine on the other. What they had in common was to advance the discipline of the study of living functions or physiology.

Irritability

Because of the influence of the inertial sciences and the success of the method used to gain knowledge of the laws and principles applying to inert nature, the initial approach was to apply the same method to vital nature. What emerged from this was the extensive study in the first part of the 1700s of ‘irritability’, this being based on the central nervous system and involving physical forces such as electricity and magnetism. However, the mechanico-material explanation was not fruitful when it came to actually dealing with life in the case of healthcare practitioners. Albrecht Von Haller's (1708–77) 'irritability' hypothesis and its failure adequately to explain the phenomenon of life, as well as the waning capacity of the Western mentality to participate living nature that lay at the root of the Hippocratic system of humours (or noetic capacities), led to a split between those who clung to the ancient tradition, but in name only (becoming routinists or empiricists), and those, largely in the universities, who sought a (material-mechanical) scientific basis regarding life and medicine. This split led to a widely acknowledged crisis in Western ‘medicine’ in the latter half of the 1700s.

That medicine c. 1800 was caught in the throes of a foundational crisis is testified to by numerous sources and above all by the documented collective striving of all leading European countries to totally reform medicine. No later than the 1780s – as the sources clearly show – were the leading doctors aware of the critical situation.

Romantic medicine and dynamics

The attempt on the part of philosophers and scientists to come to grips with the question of life led to an emphasis away from mechanics or statics, to dynamics. Life was action, living movement, a manifestation of an underlying polarity in nature and the universe. Instead of seeing nature from a ‘one-eyed, color blind’ spectator perspective, what was needed was a perspective that was binocular and participative. Inertial science had advanced in man's understanding of inert nature, her outer form or shell, what Francis Bacon termed natura naturata (outer form or appearance). However, it was not capable of going beyond this to a more dynamic discernment or apperception of the living inner content of nature, the domain of life – life in general, not just life biological as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, at the philosophic core of the scientific effort to penetrate to natura naturans, put it, asking further “what is not life?” based on the understanding of life as a dynamic polarity between powers, forces and energies. As one observer wrote "Die eigentliche Lebenslehre der Romantik aber war: Polarität." But as he promptly adds: "Sie klingt uns überall entgegen, nicht nur in der Naturphilosophie."

The foundations

Bacon's Novum Organum

The groundwork for this intensive search to understand life was laid down by Francis Bacon, who sought to sweep clean the Augean stables of late medieval Scholasticism, with its increasingly obtuse and confused attempts to approach natura naturans (nature becoming or 'naturing') using the old Greek noetic capacity, already long lost to the Western mind and having gone underground into the arts, but also the nominalist straying into abstractions and refractions in their study of natura naturata via secondary phenomena as in Newton's study of color (cf. Goethe's Farbenlehre or Study of Color). Neither the Realists nor the Nominalists of late medieval scholasticism could handle the task before them, and Bacon sought, at the start of the Age of Science, to provide a method to approach nature's outer form rationally, but by means of a conscious use of man's higher faculty in the form of the ‘forethoughtful inquiry’ (‘lux siccum’), that is, an inquiry that brought a particular idea, itself evinced through the mind and the domain of true philosophy, namely, the "mind’s self-experience in the act of thinking" (Coleridge's Biographia Literaria), or epistemology. The Baconian approach was further developed by C.S. Peirce who made a distinction between induction and abduction: the latter being the method of discovering hypotheses, the former that of testing them.

Coleridge and the role of philosophy

Bacon's work provided what Coleridge termed ‘method’ – the derivation of laws or ideas to guide the mind (mens) in its observation of nature, out of which emerges understanding (concepts) and principles (reason). It is also the task of philosophy, as Coleridge emphasized, to "settle the nomenclature," as the key to science is terminology where one term is not synonymous with something else, as is the case in demotic language, but instead the term discloses its meaning and increases understanding and knowledge. This was further developed by Heidegger and phenomenology (such as with the term Veranlassung).

Greek philosophy (love of wisdom or sophia) later emerged as philology (love of the Logos) to interpret philosophical works. It is this penetration of nature using both the eductive (as opposed to the projective) arts (innate wisdom) and (Logos-backed) sciences to achieve a rational, conscious understanding of nature, both outer form and inner essence that those who became part of the Romantic movement in England and Germany in particular, were seeking. It is not surprising that Romanticism, a scientific endeavor and quest, involved the cultural sciences or humanities (epistemology, philology, literature, poetry, arts, etc.), as well as the natural sciences.

Search for method for vital nature

Romanticism rejected the application of the method that had worked so well for inert nature to the realm of living nature, or life biological. While living organisms contained a degree of a mineral, material nature amenable to being approached via the laws of material physics and chemistry, life itself could not thereby be satisfactorily explained. On the one side, the material scientists sought a solution in reducing the non-material or metaphysical to ‘just’ a manifestation of the material, essentially thereby ignoring that this did not at all account for life. On the other side, a part of the ‘Old School’, drawing from the Hippocratic humoral theory (involving non-mechanical, etheric concepts), sought to emphasize the non-physical or vital aspect of nature, which somehow existed above and outside of nature and directed its activities. The Romantic scientists and philosophers rejected both reductionist mechano-materialism (material natural science) and conflationist mystical-idealism (vitalism).

Locke, Fichte and German Idealism

Romanticism also involved a fundamental understanding of functional polarities as the basis for and essence of life as Idea, Law and Principle. One of these polarities in cultural history involved the seminal influence of the English genius and the germinal or gestational genius of German-language culture. Coleridge mentions this in his Essays on Method, and the theme is explored in D.E. Faulkner-Jones' The English Spirit. The seminal ideas came from Francis Bacon regarding scientific method and from John Locke regarding the ideas of self-consciousness and mind. Locke set up a relationship between mind (subject) and outer world (object) wherein the mind is set in motion by objects producing sensations but also has an internal activity of its own (reflection) that acts on the sensations to create perception and conceptions. For Locke, the activity of mind is paramount, as for Bacon, and it is only through the activity of mind (consciousness) that the outer world can be ‘realized’ as causative and as actual. Identity for Locke lay in the capacity for the ‘I’ (consciousness) to unite disparate ‘deeds’ or actions of nature (as cognized by the mind), into a meaningful unity. For Locke, identity of self exists in nothing other than participation in life (the etheric) by means of fluctuating particles of matter rendered meaningful and real by acts of the mind and consciousness. The Romantics, as Locke, refused to accept the view that life is a product of “the chance whirlings of unproductive particles” (Coleridge).

Locke's ideas were taken up by Johann Fichte in Germany and developed into a philosophy of nature and natural science based on mind and consciousness, which he termed Wissenschaftslehre. Fichte, as so many of that time, was also inspired to challenge Kant's views on human freedom (constraints by material forces) and the limits to cognition, and sought this in Locke's emphasis on the mind and consciousness as the pivotal actor and creator of reality. For Fichte, selfhood (Ichheit) is an act not a thing or a substance, and being or identity consists in the acts of mind and self-consciousness, such that being and identity are co-operant. Fichte's work heavily influenced German philosophy and science, leading to a general system of thought known as German Idealism (including Schelling and Hegel), though this idealism would either end paradoxically in accepting the methods of material science for natural science (Naturphilosophie – Schelling), or in academic and lifeless dialectics (Hegel) that negate life rather than support it and used for political ends (Marxism).

The Idea of the living principle

Prior to Fichte's writings, the idea of life as a power and principle independent of and not reducible to matter or substance had been put forward in England and Scotland in the mid-1700s, by the philosopher, Thomas Reid and John Hunter (surgeon), a highly influential anatomist and surgeon as well as an observational scientist in the true Baconian tradition. Hunter rested the idea of the life principle on solid observation of nature. For him, anatomy and structure, matter and form were simply outer expressions of a vital dynamics.

This idea found a receptive soil in German philosophy and eclectic medicine, as represented by Christoph Hufeland (1762–1836), which had developed the concept of a life force or energy (Lebenskraft) as well, but one that had remained largely speculative or metaphorical. In 1781, Johan Friedrich Blumenbach, a natural philosopher and researcher published his thoughts regarding the Bildungstrieb, a dynamic power that was evolutive, progressive, and creative. Blumenbach's work provided for the later important distinction (by Samuel Hahnemann) between a sustaining power (homeostasis) and a generative power (Erzeugungskraft), not just for procreation in all its myriad forms, but also creative acts of the mind, which Coleridge said involved the imagination (as opposed to fancy), both primary (unconscious figuration) involving perception, and secondary, the latter leading to apperceptive concepts as a result of conscious acts of the mind (ideas applied to perceptions).

All of this set up a climate for ideas and concepts that went beyond the mechanistic method of inertial science, one that allowed a role for creative actions of the mind (works of art) as well as reactions to sensations involving objects. Equally, the climate was conducive to considering a dynamic between subject (self and mind/consciousness) and object, one in which the mind is both receptive and pro-active, and also one in which the mind is critical to determining the meaning and reality of any given stimulation from the world outside.

Crisis in medicine

By the end of the 1700s, medicine, not only in Germany, but throughout Europe, was in a deep crisis. This widely acknowledged crisis was brought into stark relief in 1795 in a famous critical essay by a German physician and philosopher, Johann Benjamin Erhard [de] (1766–1827), in the ‘shot’ that was heard around the medical world. "Erhard's attack focused on what he called the "uncertainty" of medical knowledge and its failure to measure up to the criteria of a philosophical Wissenschaft. He located the central problem in doctors' lack of a clear idea either of illness in general or of particular diseases."

The ‘elements’ of a new system

Johann B. Erhard’s essay, coupled with the earlier introduction of the Brunonian system into German medical circles, almost immediately triggered a remarkable surge of writings by a graduating medical student, Andreas Röschlaub. Röschlaub wrote his doctoral dissertation on the work of a rather obscure and then little known Scottish physician, John Brown, Elementa Medicinae. Almost at the same time, in 1796, a German physician., Samuel Friedrich Hahnemann, who had been highly critical of the medical practices of his day, published a remarkable essay on the treatment of disease that became the foundation for the homeopathic approach to medicine, as part of a more comprehensive scientific approach for therapeutics he termed Heilkunde, and then later Heilkunst. (Lesser Writings, p. 251)

While Brown’s work had been available in Germany for almost 15 years, since its publication in 1780, it had been mostly ignored or rejected, as in England itself, because the method outlined by Brown was seen as a mechanical approach, which hardly endeared it to the German philosophical tradition and mindset seeking a more dynamic, vital approach. However, Röschlaub grasped, where no one else had been able, even Schelling with his Naturphilosophie, that Brown had provided the very elements of an approach to health and sickness that were dynamic in nature and by means of a synthetic concept – ‘excitation’ – that was the practical application of a Lockean and Fichtean approach to the problem of cognition due to subject/object or observer/observed, to the problem of the relationship between qualitative and quantitative, and also to the very problem of life itself. "Brunonian doctrine therefore fulfilled Erhard's call for a medical practice based on the "real" causes of disease rather than on divination of the meaning of symptoms. ... where Erhard had offered only criticism, Brunonianism offered an alternative. Brunonianism now stood ready to complete what Erhard had begun, and to inaugurate a revolution in German medicine."

Röschlaub and the general theory of disturbance and disorder

Through Röschlaub’s writings, mainly between 1795 and 1806, Brown’s conception of life was brought out: as a potential in us that is brought into action and reality as a result of the workings of the actual (excitants or stimulants) on us, and of the living principle as a receptive potentiality (‘excitability’, or the capacity to be impinged upon) and pro-active (‘excitement’, or the capacity to respond to impingements), that is, as a dynamic power.

Brown's use in the original Latin of ‘incitability’ (rather than the more restricted term used in the English – ‘excitability) contained the germ of a distinction between the sustentive (Lebenskraft) and generative (Bildungstrieb) powers, as Coleridge astutely noted: “Brown has not proved that the Incitability itself cannot be altered – not merely thro’ incitement – but unmittlebar [unmediated]– Says the Jena recensent, Feb. 1799, No. 48 (Notebooks 1:38). He might have been thinking of Brown's discussion of contagious diseases wherein we see this interplay between the general action (‘affection’) of the sustentive power (excitability/excitement) and the more specific and different action of ‘contagions’ (e.g., LXXVI: “Contagious diseases are] not an exception...because...no general affection follows the application of contagion, if no undue excess or defect of excitement is the consequence..."), or his reference to a pro-creative as well as sustaining power as in CCCXXVI (“every living system lives in that which it procreates…that the system of nature remains and maintains an eternal vigour”).

When added to his distinction between beneficial (‘agreeable’) and harmful (malignities) ‘excitants’, Brown provided the basis for understanding how the level of excitability/incitability (potential) can be shifted upwards (potentiated). Finally, Brown introduced the powerful idea that pathology (unhealthy function) was simply physiology (healthy function) extended beyond a certain range of sustainable variability or pulsation (a function of the polarities that constitute life).

Röschlaub worked initially with Fichtean insights and then Schelling and his Naturphilosophie, establishing a dynamic philosophical basis in natural science for medicine. However, he realized that medicine could not be restricted to natural science, even a dynamic science grounded in physiology (the germ of which was provided by Dr. Richard Saumarez in England in 1798, A New System of Physiology, but had an artistic/aesthetic side. In this regard, he made a distinction first between Wissenschaftslehre (natural science) and Heilkunde (the practical, clinical side of therapeutics), in which latter work he established the first teaching clinic, in concert with Dr. Markus, in Bamberg, Germany.

Röschlaub made a further distinction between biophysical (Heilkunde) and biomedical (Heilkunst). The second took him into the very dimension of life itself, the etheric, that is, beyond the physical, a dimension that required an entirely different organ of knowledge from the intellect or Sinn (mens) that was the foundation of both WissenschaftsHeillehre and Heilkunde, as the construction of a protocol entails arte. Unbeknownst to him, one of his countrymen had been working on the development and understanding of this new cognitive capacity, called the Gemüt. As a result, Goethe was able to ‘see’ (anschauende Erkenntnis) into the dynamic realm of nature (natura naturans) and comprehend the very movement behind the forms, and the very functions that determined a given form, including the dynamic archetype (Kraftwesen) out of which all forms of a given Idea (such as ‘plant’ or ‘animal’) emanated. It was Goethe who founded the science of morphology. Although Goethe termed this study Metamorphosenlehre, it was, more accurately stated, a pleomorphic process.

This new cognitive capacity is what was needed for the physician or Leibarts to go beyond the inner symptomatics and outer semiotics of a case as a basis for assessment and evaluation used by the Old School, and to avoid the pitfalls of the merely empirical approach. It was the task of the physician to draw out (‘educe’), and allow ‘to come forth’ (Heidegger's Veranlassung and Hervorbringung),^[7] the natural state of health of the individual so as to enable him to undertake his individualized higher purpose in life. Heilkunst was not simply another projective art form such as painting, music, sculpture or poetry, but an educative art, in which the artist, the Heilkünstler (Hahnemann), seeks to bring forth out of the tangle of illness and disease at all levels, the true physiological selfhood, the fully liberated (at liberty to follow his higher purpose or aspiration) and conscious (a super-conscious mind higher than ordinary or waking consciousness) man or mensch.

Röschlaub also realized that Brown had only provided the basic ‘elements’ of a method for the science of life, and that what was still needed was the overarching or archetypal function from which all other functions were derivable and given meaning and direction, and which would also then provide the very goal and purpose of medicine and health, the ‘positive’ as well as the ‘negative’ (removal of suffering) sides of healthcare. However, this overarching, archetypal function would have to wait until the 20th century for its discovery and elucidation by Dr. Wilhelm Reich (Super-imposition or Überlagerung) and Rudolf Steiner's Metamorphosis, the exponents of the underlying Kraftwesen.

Hahnemann and the special theory of disease

At the same time that Röschlaub embarked on his quest for a true science of life and health, a compatriot, Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, who had quit his medical practice earlier in protest against the lack of science and efficacy of the Old School and the empty ‘metaschematisms’ of the academic ‘doctors’, had also begun a similar quest for a true system of medicine. Hahnemann's essay of 1796 and subsequent writings, all part of an extended Organon der Heilkunst, laid down the basic foundation for a distinction between the sustentive (Lebenserhaltungskraft) [Aphorism 63, 205 fn., 262] and generative (Erzeugungskraft) [Aphorism 21-22] sides of the living principle, between physic, operating under the natural healing law of opposites (contraria contrarius), and medicine proper, operating under the natural curative law of similars (similia similibus), and between disease, a dynamica impingement on the generative power (degeneration), a derangement of the sustentive power, or disturbance of homeostasis.

Hahnemann further established various principles for the application of the law of similars, including a crucial distinction between diseases of a fixed nature (tonic diseases), and those of a variable nature, the basis for the later discovery by some of his followers of a dual remedy prescribing, each remedy addressing one ‘side’ of disease, the tonic and pathic sides. Hahnemann set out a comprehensive approach to the diagnosis and treatment of disease, including a nosology.

Details of Heilkunst

Hahnemann argued, logically, that the material effects of disease could not be their own cause (causa morbii). Disease was instead a dynamic affection of the generative power occasioned by a spirit-like morbid entity (Krankheitswesen) [Aphorisms 22, 28] that had the power to impinge upon the generative power of a human (Menschenkraftwesen) [Aphorism 289 fn.], acting as malignant ‘excitants’ in the Brunonian sense. However, this power depended on a susceptibility or receptivity (negative resonance) caused by weakening of the life force from various malignities (Brown's underlying diathesis).

The disease process consists of a dual action: the initial action (Eerstwirkung) [Aphorisms 70,62,64,65] of the disease agent, which impinges upon the generative power, which is generally imperceptible (such as the initial infection by the measles microbe), and the counter or after-action (Gegenwirkung [Aph. 63,112, 115], Nachwirkung) [Aph. 62,70, 71] of the sustentive power, which produces the various sufferings the patient complains about.

While the fixed nature of tonic diseases could be identified by discerning the underlying causal state of mind, along with a curative medicine based on fixed principles, the variable or pathic diseases could only be identified, along with their curative medicine, through the symptoms (suffering or pathos) produced by the disease in the patient. However, such an approach was problematic as a person could have more than one disease at a time (Aph. 40–44). This then required a principle to organize the symptoms into an identifiable complex (Inbegriff) correspondent to a given disease state. Just as each tonic disease has a unique state of mind disturbance, so does each pathic disease contain a unique disturbance of the thermal organization in man. This approach to pathic diseases Hahnemann termed homeopathy (from the Greek homoios and pathos, or similar suffering). This approach expanded empiricism from its limitation within the bounds of Erfahrung (experience of outer forms or natura naturata) to Erlebnis provings (experience via the life body of natura naturans).

The tonic diseases were to be found in various jurisdictions: homotoxic (toxins), homogenic (physical and emotional traumas), pathogenic, iatrogenic and ideogenic (spiritual diseases engendered by false belief, which he termed the "highest diseases" - as compared to the ‘deepest’ pathic diseases). The pathic diseases are found in reversible layers (‘layers prescribing’).

Because the pathic diseases generally arise out of the more primary constant (tonic) diseases, such as the chronic diseases that arise out of the chronic miasms, Hahnemann also laid down the principle that the tonic diseases should be treated first, and second any remaining pathic diseases.

In order to treat successfully the other cases of disease occurring in man, and which, be they acute or chronic, differ so vastly among each other [pathic], if they cannot be referred to some primary disease which is constant in its character [tonic], they must each be regarded as peculiar diseases, and a medicine which in its pure effects on the healthy body shows symptoms similar to those of the case before us, must be administered. (Lesser Writings, p. 693)

While the curative medicines for the tonic diseases could be largely determined by the principle linking disease and medicinal agent for the relevant jurisdiction, pathic disease treatment required a corresponding image of derangement of the Lebenskraft or Leib (executive organ of the Kraftwesen) so that this could be matched to the image presented by the patient. The problem lay in that a patient could present with more than one disease, each with a particular grouping of symptoms, but how could the practitioner link which symptoms manifest disorder(s) and of those ascribable to disease, and to which disease of the several possible at a given time in the patient, and finally, how could one trace any symptoms so identified to their origins? Here Hahnemann's genius adduced a living experience (Erlebnis) of the essence of a natural substance (Naturwesen) by way of a human prover, and in doing so, also provided the very practical scientific basis for removing the barrier set up by Kantian intellect between observer and observed, by invoking the cognitive capacity of Goethe's Gemüt (Aphorism 253 of the Organon der Heilkunst). Goethe himself, later in his life, recognized that Hahnemann had found a way to apply to and through human nature what he was doing with Mother Nature.

In the light of difficulties treating more complex cases, Hahnemann undertook further research and developed a theory of chronic miasms, which are fixed nature diseases of the pathogenic type (originally infectious, but also inherited) which give rise to all the (secondary) chronic diseases, which are pathic in nature (cf. Röschlaub's Pathogenesis). Hahnemann also gave indications as to when the practitioner could tell that the disease had been cured by the similar medicine and healing was underway (the complete process termed "heilen" or remediation). Constantine Hering, often called the Father of Homeopathy in the US, further developed these guidelines, which are often referred to as "Hering's Law or Principles" :

• from less vital to more vital organs
• in the case of pain, from above down
• in the same direction as the natural disease process.

This was later expanded in the latter half of the 19th century by Dr. James Tyler Kent who noticed that when disease was suppressed or several groups of symptoms (diseases) developed in a patient over time, that the remedial process proceeded in the reverse order of their emergence. This provides the basis for a sequential treatment of diseases. If some symptoms become worse some time after the similar medicine or there is even a return of old symptoms, essentially in chronic, complex cases, this Hahnemann identified as part of the healing process, which involves the counteraction of the sustentive power of the Kraftwesen against the medicine (similar ‘disease’).[Aph. 63-64]

While medicine had historically recognized, even into Hahnemann's time, the law of similars (similia similibus), it was also wary of its use because of risk of harm with the improper dose, and had largely abandoned it in favor of the other approach set out by Hippocrates involving the law of opposites, that is, acting to support the physis or sustentive power. Dr. Hahnemann discovered a way to attenuate the dose so that it could be rendered harmless but remain therapeutically active, what is often referred to as ‘dynamization’. Later he also discovered a way in which to sublimate, or the increase in dynamic power, of medicines (cf. Brown's sthenic enhancement).

Because of the use of these two laws, we have two great realms of therapeutics: medicine proper, (medic-al) which is the application of the law of similars, and physic-al, which is the application of the law of opposites. This gives us the mutually interactive and supportive jurisdictions of the true Heilkundiger and Heilkünstler – physician and medician, involving respectively a "physic" approach based on the law of opposites and a "medic" approach based on the law of similars.

Compeers, not rivals

Dr. Brown provided the essential elements for a new, functional (actions of powers, forces and energies) approach to understanding life and health, which insights were elaborated by Drs. Röschlaub and Hahnemann. Through their work, a fundamental set of dynamic polarities emerged with which to understand the essential polaric nature of life itself:

• sustentive and generative sides of the living power
• disturbances that lead first to disorders which can render one susceptible to contracting disease
• physical and medical interventions – physician and medician
• regimen and remedial agents for physic
• tonic and pathic diseases/chronic miasms and chronic diseases
• Erfahrung/Erlebnis
• Healing and curing
• Disease process: direct action of disease wesen and counteraction of human wesen
• Remedial process: curative action and healing reaction

At the same time, Goethe's scientific work on the underlying living functions in nature and Dr. Saumarez's new physiology of functions provided the necessary basis for understanding health and life. Underneath it all lay the elements of the Brunonian system, with its dynamic interplay of impression and response, positive or negative in terms of health (physiology) and divergences therefrom (pathology).

Goethe and Hahnemann

Goethe's approach to Mother Nature provided the theoretical foundation for and found a practical application in human nature in the works of Samuel Hahnemann. Goethe was aware of Hahnemann and his new approach to disease, and was treated using Hahnemann's system of medicine, Heilkunst. On one occasion Goethe wrote:

...Dr. Samuel Hahnemann...certainly a world-famous physician...I believe more than ever in this wonderful doctor’s theory as I have experienced...and continue to experience so clearly the efficacy of a very small administration.” And in another letter he strongly proclaimed himself a “Hahnemannian disciple”...

In his famous play, Faust, Goethe has the lead character, Mephistopheles, assert the homeopathic principle of similars: “To like things like, whatever one may ail; there’s certain help.”

In his later life and in his writing and diaries, Goethe writes in Faust: ‘Similia Similibus applies to all disorders‘, identifying the central theme of homeopathy and elaborating his sympathy and understanding of homeopathy, as illustrated in Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship and his Tower Society which ‘adopts the homeopathic approach to its own psychological methods by using the irrational beliefs of its patients to cure them‘, portraying the ‘mistaken ideas as illness’, and using sickness to combat sickness. [also Werthe]

Goethe wrote several letters in 1820 mentioning and supporting ‘Hahnemann’s method’, ‘Hahnemann’s terminology’, and declaring his ‘confession of faith of a Hahnemannian disciple’, and indicating that he had read his works and looked forward to reflecting on ‘the wonder physician’.

Goethe was also aware of and followed Hahnemann's dietary rules. In 1826, he wrote to the Grand Duke Karl August that his diet was ‘almost Hahnemannian in its strictness’.

Hahnemann grasped and worked directly with Goethe's key contribution to Romantic epistemology, the Gemüt, or emotional mind and resonance organ, as well as its polarity to the Geist or spiritual mind, the directive organ: Geistes oder Gemüths Zustandes des Kranken; Geistes- oder Gemüths-Krankheiten; gemüthlicher und geistiger Charakter; Gemüthsart; Gemüths- und Denkungs- Art; Geistes- und Gemüths-Organe, Gemüths-Verstimmung.

Hahnemann undertook in the human realm what Goethe had explored in the plant realm with his morphology, that 'adventure of reason' Kant had stated was not possible, and observed first hand, through a living experience (Erlebnis) the impact of a natural Wesen (dynamic, living essential power) on a human Wesen (initially himself, and later other volunteers), producing a systematic image of the disturbance it produced in terms of pathology (alterations in feelings, functions and sensations) and semiology (outwardly perceptible signs), both over time in the one person, and then over time in a number of people giving an image (Bild) of the disturbance through its various expressions and manifestations, a Goethean approach. Indeed, the entire series and progression of provings or living experiences of medicinal substances by overtly healthy people constitutes an example of what Goethe was promoting as true scientific research:

The only way for a scientist to establish connections between seemingly isolated Erfahrungen or phenomena is through the "Vermannigfaltigung eines jeden einzelnen Versuches." [cf. Hahnemann's Materia Medica derived from a plurality of provers for each medicament and the plurality of provings comprising the whole] The scientist must work "indefatigably" through the manifold permutations and forms of a particular experiment (Naturlehre 35). The scientist must first conduct a series [Reihe] of experiments and, second, serialize them, i.e. consider them as one continuous and complete series of experiments. Studied in this manner—a method that I laid out above as the first step in the practice of morphology—these serialized experiments can represent "einen Versuch, nur eine Erfahrung" (Naturlehre 34) [cf. Hahnemnn's Arzneiversuche]. The serialization and subsequent reflection [meditation] on singular experiments and Erfahrungen, writes Goethe, produces an "Erfahrung [Phenomenon] von einer höhern Art."

In his approach to disease diagnoses and treatment, Hahnemann avoided what Goethe considered the ‘greatest failure’ (Unheil) and fault of material science, namely the separation of experimenter from nature, producing abstract hypotheses (notions) and artificial (künstlich) approaches/treatments based on an accumulation of disparate facts, rather than seeing nature as a complex web of associations, and understanding, as did Hahnemann and Goethe that "scientific knowledge emerges out of relationships and historical contexts."

Hahemann also sought to understand disease in its historical progression, as in the case of his Wesensgeschichte of Psora, the archetype (tonic) of inherited chronic disease, as well as its pleomorphic unfolding via numerous (gradated) levels of secondary (pathic) diseases, which then required a sequential (scalar) approach to treatment. Goethe's morphological insights provide the theoretical basis for Hahnemann's empirical discoveries and living experiments ('provings' or Erlbenisse). In these provings, Hahnemann sought to contemplate the movement, the flow and transformation of a disease state (Gestalt), not just an abstract image. Hahnemann also had a Goethean understanding of the sequential nature or unfolding of a disease phenomenon.

In Hahnemann's distinction between the two sides of the Lebenskraft – the sustentive or Erhaltungskraft and the generative or Erzeugungskraft (Bildungstrieb), we find the polar logic identified in Goethe's Chromatology – ‘the sufferings and deeds of light’ via a turbid medium, in the struggle between light energy (Licht) and the now identified 'dark' energy (Finsternis). We also find this polarity, as well as Goethe's distinction between the spectrum of dark and of light, in the distinction Hahnemann made between primary or tonic disease (based on a super-sensible knowing of psychic states involving alterations in circumstances, occurrents and behaviors via the Goethean Gemüt or super-sensible cognitive organ) and secondary or pathic disease (based on the sensible manifestation of life energy at the somatic level in terms of feelings, functions and sensations, as well as signs). For Goethe the turbid medium is the atmosphere (airy realm), for Hahnemann it is the living organism (fluid or etheric realm). Goethe's interplay of Licht and Finsternis can also be seen in Hahnemann's polarity between Geist (Spirit) and Wesen (Dynamis).

The objections that Goethe leveled against the taxonomy of Linnaeus in botany can be found in the medical sphere in Hahnemann's criticism of the blindly empirical or abstractly intellectual nosology of his time that took a few outer elements, arbitrarily conflated them, then confounded similarity of appearance here with identity of cause and origin. Hahnemann's criticism also was based on an historical study of the morphology of this medical state of mind or Kurwesen, much as Goethe considered the study of history of a phenomenon as a form of knowledge (as did the Greeks). Equally, Hahnemann was critical of a static approach to disease nosology, which was constantly shape-shifting as the interaction between Krankheitwesen and Menschenwesen expressed different aspects of the same underlying disease (these being considered different diseases in the static Linnean nosology of materialistic medicine). Hahnemann also understood that there was an element of fixity and variability to disease (found in his distinction (1796) between primary (tonic) and secondary (pathic) diseases, just as Goethe accepted a degree of form and structure at the physical level whilst pointing to the underlying dynamics leading to new forms over time (Darwin's adaptation).

Lutze and Schönlein

The works of Hahnemann and Röschlaub were continued and furthered by Drs. Arthur Lutze and Johan Schönlein (1793–1864) respectively. Lutze (1813–1870) took the foundations of Hahnemann's approach to disease and placed it on a solid romantic footing in consciously and consistently applying dual remedy prescribing (tonic and pathic disease associations in a given patient).

Where Hahnemann had hesitated and eventually withdrew his public support in the 5th edition of his Organon der Heilkunst for dual remedy prescribing, having been unable yet to establish a principle upon which to ground it rationally (what is known as the ‘dual remedy affair’), Lutze later re-issued the 5th edition with the withdrawn dual remedy section and clinically practiced based on such an approach. His contribution is recognized in the monument to both Hahnemann and Lutze in Köthen, Germany.

Röschlaub's innovative work in establishing a teaching clinic based on the Brunonian system, in conjunction with Dr. Albert Marcus, was developed further by J. L. Schönlein (1793–1864), who is recognized explicitly even in allopathic historiography for having established the scientific foundation for the modern teaching and practice clinic. This foundation is one based on natural science, but also on the arte (Pascal's spirit of finesse) of the practitioner, which is something objective and reproducible though based on a different logic and involving more fugitive causes (allopathic ‘medicine’ accepting only the first and then only natural inertial science, not a true physiology of functions, both physical and etheric)

The schism

Up until the middle of the 19th century, following the pioneering work of Brown, Hahnemann, Röschlaub, Lutze and Schönlein, to mention only the main figures, the scientific approach to the question of life, particularly as reflected in the development of Healthcare, seemed conducive to the development of a method that was based on a cognitive capacity going beyond mere mentation (Sinn or mens) and a true physiology involving living functions rather than simply mechanics and chemistry. However, it seemed that the Zeitgeist (Spirit of the Times) could not yet accept such an approach, most minds being still fully ensconced in the intellectual phase (Coleridge's "epoch of the intellect and the senses") of human consciousness. It was only the extraordinary mind of genius that was able at this stage to meet the challenge of a true science of life and mind, what Colerdige termed the “Dynamic System of Thought.”

As a result, the analytical approach favored by the French, schooled in the Cartesian system of mind-body duality, and with their significant advances in surgery (albeit based on access to and development of original Greek medical writings and more modern Greek surgical practice), came to dominate Western science. In Germany, the work of Rudolf Virchow, while drawing from the advances made by Romantic science, effectively reduced and simplified them more in line with what the intellect was able to grasp. The achievements of Romantic Science and Medicine could not be denied, but neither could they be accepted; instead, the followers of the Romantic tradition were either denigrated as considered misguided, occult, and ultimately dreamers rather than serious scientists. The following historiographic assessment is the one that has generally prevailed until recently.

Around the middle of the 1800s, medicine makes a gigantic surge into a critical, empirical-analytical research project: Virchow's demand for a strict, natural [inertial] scientific method then enabled medical thinking to disentangle itself from the flowery and thorny fields of romantic Naturphilosophie and to transplant itself into the earth of natural scientific-analytic procedure. (Schrenk 1973)

Virchow's cellular theory provided the supposed basis for life, without explaining it, and superseded the ancient, and by now denigrated humoral theory (because the noetic capacity to diagnose at this etheric level had waned). As such, chemistry and physics could become the basis for medicine, all the more in that medicine effectively had been reduced to surgery and chemistry, the latter due to Pasteur's ‘germ theory’ of disease (really an unproven hypothesis and where proven according to strict requirements of Koch's postulates, still not fully explanatory in terms of the concepts and reality of ‘susceptibility’ and ‘immunity’, which contemporaries of Pasteur, such as Béchamp and Claude Bernard, sought to address).

The problem of life was to be ‘solved’ by Virchow's cellular hypothesis as the basis of life, which conveniently posited life within medicine without having to explain it. Thus, as N. Tsouyopoulos points out, Western ‘medicine’ was effectively reduced to surgery and emergency drug treatments, possessing no basis to deal with chronic, complex disorders or diseases having rejected the dynamic approaches developed by the Brunonian orientation, as developed in general terms (physic and physiology) by Röschlaub/Schönlein and Saumarez, and in particular regarding disease (medicine and pathology) by Hahnemann/Lutze. As one reviewer of Tsouyopoulos' major work on romantic medicine summarized: "Romantic medicine was to fall into disfavour as the positivist approach from France gained ground, to the point where Karl August Wunderlich in 1859 dismissed it as mere hollow theory divorced from all empiricism, a myth that survived for nearly a century."

To the extent that human physiology contains a physical/chemical aspect (broken bones, impinging tumours on vital nerves, severed arteries, or severe tissue damage, significant hormonal or chemical imbalances, severe microbial invasion, and the like), a mechanic-material approach will produce effective results, witness the ‘miracles’ of Western emergency medicine, but in the realm of internal ‘medicine’, there are no cures, only the suppression of symptoms or long-term disease and disorder management using chemical means, mostly synthetic, the intellect seeing no difference between a natural ‘chemical’ and a synthesized one. As one writer summarizes: "Alongside of English and French medicine of that time, whose significance was never under-appreciated, German Romantic Medicine comes off in no way as inferior or reactionary. Its contribution to overcoming the foundational crisis in medical history and for founding a scientific clinic is substantial and decisive for the whole of later developments...today, in our searching for new models and alternatives in medicine, Romantic Medicine lies closer to home than the so-called natural scientific medicine of the later 1800s and early 1900s."

Contemporary use

In 2017, Kamiar-K. Rueckert introduced the term "Romantic Patient" in reference to Romantic medicine and romantic relationships to describe a patient group, which uses the defence mechanism of splitting to divide medicine into good spiritual alternative medicine and bad scientific-based medicine. In his view, these patients are on the one hand aware of their longing for an intuitively understood healing relationship, while on the other hand deny their underlying reason for this longing.

Paul Dirac

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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

 

Paul Dirac OM FRS
Dirac in 1933
Born	Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac 8 August 1902 Bristol, England
Died	20 October 1984 (aged 82) Tallahassee, Florida, U.S.
Nationality	British
Education	University of Bristol University of Cambridge

Spouse	Margit Wigner ​ (m. 1937)​
Children	2
Awards	Nobel Prize in Physics (1933) Royal Medal (1939) Copley Medal (1952) Max Planck Medal (1952) Fellow of the Royal Society (1930)
Scientific career
Fields	Theoretical physics
Institutions	University of Cambridge University of Miami Florida State University
Thesis	Quantum Mechanics (1926)
Doctoral advisor	Ralph Fowler
Doctoral students	Homi J. Bhabha Harish-Chandra Dennis Sciama Fred Hoyle Behram Kurşunoğlu John Polkinghorne
Influences	John Stuart Mill

Portrait of Paul Dirac by Clara Ewald (1939)

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac OM FRS (/dɪˈræk/; 8 August 1902 – 20 October 1984) was an English theoretical physicist who is considered to be one of the founders of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, a professor of physics at Florida State University and the University of Miami, and a 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics recipient.

Dirac made fundamental contributions to the early development of both quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. Among other discoveries, he formulated the Dirac equation which describes the behaviour of fermions and predicted the existence of antimatter. Dirac shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with Erwin Schrödinger "for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory". He also made significant contributions to the reconciliation of general relativity with quantum mechanics.

Dirac was regarded by his friends and colleagues as unusual in character. In a 1926 letter to Paul Ehrenfest, Albert Einstein wrote of a Dirac paper, "I am toiling over Dirac. This balancing on the dizzying path between genius and madness is awful." In another letter concerning the Compton effect he wrote, "I don't understand the details of Dirac at all."

Personal life

Early years

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was born at his parents' home in Bristol, England, on 8 August 1902, and grew up in the Bishopston area of the city. His father, Charles Adrien Ladislas Dirac, was an immigrant from Saint-Maurice, Switzerland, who worked in Bristol as a French teacher. His mother, Florence Hannah Dirac, née Holten, was born to a Cornish Methodist family in Liskeard, Cornwall. She was named after Florence Nightingale by her father, a ship's captain, who had met Nightingale while he was a soldier during the Crimean war. His mother moved to Bristol as a young woman, where she worked as a librarian at the Bristol Central Library; despite this she still considered her identity to be Cornish rather than English. Paul had a younger sister, Béatrice Isabelle Marguerite, known as Betty, and an older brother, Reginald Charles Félix, known as Felix, who died by suicide in March 1925. Dirac later recalled: "My parents were terribly distressed. I didn't know they cared so much ... I never knew that parents were supposed to care for their children, but from then on I knew."

Charles and the children were officially Swiss nationals until they became naturalised on 22 October 1919. Dirac's father was strict and authoritarian, although he disapproved of corporal punishment. Dirac had a strained relationship with his father, so much so that after his father's death, Dirac wrote, "I feel much freer now, and I am my own man." Charles forced his children to speak to him only in French so that they might learn the language. When Dirac found that he could not express what he wanted to say in French, he chose to remain silent.

Education

Dirac was educated first at Bishop Road Primary School and then at the all-boys Merchant Venturers' Technical College (later Cotham School), where his father was a French teacher. The school was an institution attached to the University of Bristol, which shared grounds and staff. It emphasised technical subjects like bricklaying, shoemaking and metalwork, and modern languages. This was unusual at a time when secondary education in Britain was still dedicated largely to the classics, and something for which Dirac would later express his gratitude.

Dirac studied electrical engineering on a City of Bristol University Scholarship at the University of Bristol's engineering faculty, which was co-located with the Merchant Venturers' Technical College. Shortly before he completed his degree in 1921, he sat for the entrance examination for St John's College, Cambridge. He passed and was awarded a £70 scholarship, but this fell short of the amount of money required to live and study at Cambridge. Despite his having graduated with a first class honours Bachelor of Science degree in engineering, the economic climate of the post-war depression was such that he was unable to find work as an engineer. Instead, he took up an offer to study for a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics at the University of Bristol free of charge. He was permitted to skip the first year of the course owing to his engineering degree. Under the influence of Peter Fraser, whom Dirac called the best mathematics teacher, he had the most interest in projective geometry, and began applying it to the geometrical version of relativity Minkowski developed.

In 1923, Dirac graduated, once again with first class honours, and received a £140 scholarship from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. Along with his £70 scholarship from St John's College, this was enough to live at Cambridge. There, Dirac pursued his interests in the theory of general relativity, an interest he had gained earlier as a student in Bristol, and in the nascent field of quantum physics, under the supervision of Ralph Fowler. From 1925 to 1928 he held an 1851 Research Fellowship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851. He completed his PhD in June 1926 with the first thesis on quantum mechanics to be submitted anywhere. He then continued his research in Copenhagen and Göttingen. In the spring of 1929, he was a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Family

Paul and Manci Dirac in Copenhagen, July 1963

In 1937, Dirac married Margit Wigner, a sister of physicist Eugene Wigner and a divorcee. Dirac raised Margit's two children, Judith and Gabriel, as if they were his own. Paul and Margit Dirac also had two daughters together, Mary Elizabeth and Florence Monica.

Margit, known as Manci, had visited her brother in 1934 in Princeton, New Jersey, from their native Hungary and, while at dinner at the Annex Restaurant, met the "lonely-looking man at the next table". This account from a Korean physicist, Y. S. Kim, who met and was influenced by Dirac, also says: "It is quite fortunate for the physics community that Manci took good care of our respected Paul A. M. Dirac. Dirac published eleven papers during the period 1939–46. Dirac was able to maintain his normal research productivity only because Manci was in charge of everything else".

Personality

Dirac was known among his colleagues for his precise and taciturn nature. His colleagues in Cambridge jokingly defined a unit called a "dirac", which was one word per hour. When Niels Bohr complained that he did not know how to finish a sentence in a scientific article he was writing, Dirac replied, "I was taught at school never to start a sentence without knowing the end of it." He criticised the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer's interest in poetry: "The aim of science is to make difficult things understandable in a simpler way; the aim of poetry is to state simple things in an incomprehensible way. The two are incompatible."

Dirac himself wrote in his diary during his postgraduate years that he concentrated solely on his research, and stopped only on Sunday when he took long strolls alone.

An anecdote recounted in a review of the 2009 biography tells of Werner Heisenberg and Dirac sailing on an ocean liner to a conference in Japan in August 1929. "Both still in their twenties, and unmarried, they made an odd couple. Heisenberg was a ladies' man who constantly flirted and danced, while Dirac—'an Edwardian geek', as biographer Graham Farmelo puts it—suffered agonies if forced into any kind of socializing or small talk. 'Why do you dance?' Dirac asked his companion. 'When there are nice girls, it is a pleasure,' Heisenberg replied. Dirac pondered this notion, then blurted out: 'But, Heisenberg, how do you know beforehand that the girls are nice?'"

Margit Dirac told both George Gamow and Anton Capri in the 1960s that her husband had said to a house visitor, "Allow me to present Wigner's sister, who is now my wife."

Another story told of Dirac is that when he first met the young Richard Feynman at a conference, he said after a long silence, "I have an equation. Do you have one too?"

After he presented a lecture at a conference, one colleague raised his hand and said: "I don't understand the equation on the top-right-hand corner of the blackboard". After a long silence, the moderator asked Dirac if he wanted to answer the question, to which Dirac replied: "That was not a question, it was a comment."

Dirac was also noted for his personal modesty. He called the equation for the time evolution of a quantum-mechanical operator, which he was the first to write down, the "Heisenberg equation of motion". Most physicists speak of Fermi–Dirac statistics for half-integer-spin particles and Bose–Einstein statistics for integer-spin particles. While lecturing later in life, Dirac always insisted on calling the former "Fermi statistics". He referred to the latter as "Bose statistics" for reasons, he explained, of "symmetry".

Views on religion

Heisenberg recollected a conversation among young participants at the 1927 Solvay Conference about Einstein and Planck's views on religion between Wolfgang Pauli, Heisenberg and Dirac. Dirac's contribution was a criticism of the political purpose of religion, which Bohr regarded as quite lucid when hearing it from Heisenberg later. Among other things, Dirac said:

I don't know why we are discussing religion. If we are honest—and scientists have to be—we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination. It is quite understandable why primitive people, who were so much more exposed to the overpowering forces of nature than we are today, should have personified these forces in fear and trembling. But nowadays, when we understand so many natural processes, we have no need for such solutions. I can't for the life of me see how the postulate of an Almighty God helps us in any way. What I do see is that this assumption leads to such unproductive questions as to why God allows so much misery and injustice, the exploitation of the poor by the rich, and all the other horrors He might have prevented. If religion is still being taught, it is by no means because its ideas still convince us, but simply because some of us want to keep the lower classes quiet. Quiet people are much easier to govern than clamorous and dissatisfied ones. They are also much easier to exploit. Religion is a kind of opium that allows a nation to lull itself into wishful dreams and so forget the injustices that are being perpetrated against the people. Hence the close alliance between those two great political forces, the State and the Church. Both need the illusion that a kindly God rewards—in heaven if not on earth—all those who have not risen up against injustice, who have done their duty quietly and uncomplainingly. That is precisely why the honest assertion that God is a mere product of the human imagination is branded as the worst of all mortal sins.

Heisenberg's view was tolerant. Pauli, raised as a Catholic, had kept silent after some initial remarks, but when finally he was asked for his opinion, said: "Well, our friend Dirac has got a religion and its guiding principle is 'There is no God, and Paul Dirac is His prophet.'" Everybody, including Dirac, burst into laughter.

Later in life, Dirac's views towards the idea of God were less acerbic. As an author of an article appearing in the May 1963 edition of Scientific American, Dirac wrote:

It seems to be one of the fundamental features of nature that fundamental physical laws are described in terms of a mathematical theory of great beauty and power, needing quite a high standard of mathematics for one to understand it. You may wonder: Why is nature constructed along these lines? One can only answer that our present knowledge seems to show that nature is so constructed. We simply have to accept it. One could perhaps describe the situation by saying that God is a mathematician of a very high order, and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe. Our feeble attempts at mathematics enable us to understand a bit of the universe, and as we proceed to develop higher and higher mathematics we can hope to understand the universe better.

In 1971, at a conference meeting, Dirac expressed his views on the existence of God. Dirac explained that the existence of God could be justified only if an improbable event were to have taken place in the past:

It could be that it is extremely difficult to start life. It might be that it is so difficult to start a life that it has happened only once among all the planets... Let us consider, just as a conjecture, that the chance of life starting when we have got suitable physical conditions is 10⁻¹⁰⁰. I don't have any logical reason for proposing this figure, I just want you to consider it as a possibility. Under those conditions ... it is almost certain that life would not have started. And I feel that under those conditions it will be necessary to assume the existence of a god to start off life. I would like, therefore, to set up this connection between the existence of a god and the physical laws: if physical laws are such that to start off life involves an excessively small chance so that it will not be reasonable to suppose that life would have started just by blind chance, then there must be a god, and such a god would probably be showing his influence in the quantum jumps which are taking place later on. On the other hand, if life can start very easily and does not need any divine influence, then I will say that there is no god.

Dirac did not commit himself to any definite view, but he described the possibilities for scientifically answering the question of God.

Career

Dirac established the most general theory of quantum mechanics and discovered the relativistic equation for the electron, which now bears his name. The remarkable notion of an antiparticle to each fermion particle – e.g. the positron as antiparticle to the electron – stems from his equation. He was the first to develop quantum field theory, which underlies all theoretical work on sub-atomic or "elementary" particles today, work that is fundamental to our understanding of the forces of nature. He proposed and investigated the concept of a magnetic monopole, an object not yet known empirically, as a means of bringing even greater symmetry to James Clerk Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism.

Quantum theory

Dirac's first step into a new quantum theory was taken late in September 1925. Ralph Fowler, his research supervisor, had received a proof copy of an exploratory paper by Werner Heisenberg in the framework of the old quantum theory of Bohr and Sommerfeld. Heisenberg leaned heavily on Bohr's correspondence principle but changed the equations so that they involved directly observable quantities, leading to the matrix formulation of quantum mechanics. Fowler sent Heisenberg's paper on to Dirac, who was on vacation in Bristol, asking him to look into this paper carefully.

Dirac's attention was drawn to a mysterious mathematical relationship, at first sight unintelligible, that Heisenberg had established. Several weeks later, back in Cambridge, Dirac suddenly recognised that this mathematical form had the same structure as the Poisson brackets that occur in the classical dynamics of particle motion. At the time, his memory of Poisson brackets was rather vague, but he found E. T. Whittaker's Analytical Dynamics of Particles and Rigid Bodies illuminating. From his new understanding, he developed a quantum theory based on non-commuting dynamical variables. This led him to the most profound and significant general formulation of quantum mechanics to date. Dirac's formulation allowed him to obtain the quantisation rules in a novel and more illuminating manner. For this work, published in 1926, Dirac received a PhD from Cambridge. This formed the basis for Fermi-Dirac statistics that applies to systems consisting of many identical spin 1/2 particles (i.e. that obey the Pauli exclusion principle), e.g. electrons in solids and liquids, and importantly to the field of conduction in semi-conductors.

Dirac was famously not bothered by issues of interpretation in quantum theory. In fact, in a paper published in a book in his honour, he wrote: "The interpretation of quantum mechanics has been dealt with by many authors, and I do not want to discuss it here. I want to deal with more fundamental things."

The Dirac equation

Further information: Dirac equation

In 1928, building on 2×2 spin matrices which he purported to have discovered independently of Wolfgang Pauli's work on non-relativistic spin systems (Dirac told Abraham Pais, "I believe I got these [matrices] independently of Pauli and possibly Pauli got these independently of me."), he proposed the Dirac equation as a relativistic equation of motion for the wave function of the electron. This work led Dirac to predict the existence of the positron, the electron's antiparticle, which he interpreted in terms of what came to be called the Dirac sea. The positron was observed by Carl Anderson in 1932. Dirac's equation also contributed to explaining the origin of quantum spin as a relativistic phenomenon.

The necessity of fermions (matter) being created and destroyed in Enrico Fermi's 1934 theory of beta decay led to a reinterpretation of Dirac's equation as a "classical" field equation for any point particle of spin ħ/2, itself subject to quantisation conditions involving anti-commutators. Thus reinterpreted, in 1934 by Werner Heisenberg, as a (quantum) field equation accurately describing all elementary matter particles – today quarks and leptons – this Dirac field equation is as central to theoretical physics as the Maxwell, Yang–Mills and Einstein field equations. Dirac is regarded as the founder of quantum electrodynamics, being the first to use that term. He also introduced the idea of vacuum polarisation in the early 1930s. This work was key to the development of quantum mechanics by the next generation of theorists, in particular Schwinger, Feynman, Sin-Itiro Tomonaga and Dyson in their formulation of quantum electrodynamics.

Dirac's The Principles of Quantum Mechanics, published in 1930, is a landmark in the history of science. It quickly became one of the standard textbooks on the subject and is still used today. In that book, Dirac incorporated the previous work of Werner Heisenberg on matrix mechanics and of Erwin Schrödinger on wave mechanics into a single mathematical formalism that associates measurable quantities to operators acting on the Hilbert space of vectors that describe the state of a physical system. The book also introduced the Dirac delta function. Following his 1939 article, he also included the bra–ket notation in the third edition of his book, thereby contributing to its universal use nowadays.

Magnetic monopoles

In 1931, Dirac proposed that the existence of a single magnetic monopole in the universe would suffice to explain the quantisation of electrical charge. In 1975, 1982 and 2009, intriguing results suggested the possible detection of magnetic monopoles, but there is, to date, no direct evidence for their existence (see also Searches for magnetic monopoles).

Gravity

Dirac quantized the gravitational field and developed a general theory of the quantum field with dynamical constraints, which forms the basis of the gauge theories and superstring theories of today. The influence and importance of Dirac's work have increased with the decades, and physicists use daily the concepts and equations that he developed.

University of Cambridge

Dirac was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge from 1932 to 1969. In 1937, he proposed a speculative cosmological model based on the large numbers hypothesis. During World War II, he conducted important theoretical and experimental research on uranium enrichment by gas centrifuge.

Dirac's quantum electrodynamics (QED) made predictions that were – more often than not – infinite and therefore unacceptable. A workaround known as renormalisation was developed, but Dirac never accepted this. "I must say that I am very dissatisfied with the situation", he said in 1975, "because this so-called 'good theory' does involve neglecting infinities which appear in its equations, neglecting them in an arbitrary way. This is just not sensible mathematics. Sensible mathematics involves neglecting a quantity when it is small – not neglecting it just because it is infinitely great and you do not want it!" His refusal to accept renormalisation resulted in his work on the subject moving increasingly out of the mainstream.

However, from his once rejected notes he managed to work on putting quantum electrodynamics on "logical foundations" based on Hamiltonian formalism that he formulated. He found a rather novel way of deriving the anomalous magnetic moment "Schwinger term" and also the Lamb shift, afresh in 1963, using the Heisenberg picture and without using the joining method used by Weisskopf and French, and by the two pioneers of modern QED, Schwinger and Feynman. That was two years before the Tomonaga–Schwinger–Feynman QED was given formal recognition by an award of the Nobel Prize for physics.

Weisskopf and French (FW) were the first to obtain the correct result for the Lamb shift and the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron. At first FW results did not agree with the incorrect but independent results of Feynman and Schwinger. The 1963–1964 lectures Dirac gave on quantum field theory at Yeshiva University were published in 1966 as the Belfer Graduate School of Science, Monograph Series Number, 3.

Florida State University and University of Miami

After having relocated to Florida to be near his elder daughter, Mary, Dirac spent his last fourteen years of both life and physics research at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, and Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida.

In the 1950s in his search for a better QED, Paul Dirac developed the Hamiltonian theory of constraints based on lectures that he delivered at the 1949 International Mathematical Congress in Canada. Dirac had also solved the problem of putting the Schwinger–Tomonaga equation into the Schrödinger representation and given explicit expressions for the scalar meson field (spin zero pion or pseudoscalar meson), the vector meson field (spin one rho meson), and the electromagnetic field (spin one massless boson, photon).

The Hamiltonian of constrained systems is one of Dirac's many masterpieces. It is a powerful generalisation of Hamiltonian theory that remains valid for curved spacetime. The equations for the Hamiltonian involve only six degrees of freedom described by ${\displaystyle g_{rs}}$,${\displaystyle p^{rs}}$ for each point of the surface on which the state is considered. The ${\displaystyle g_{m0}}$ (m = 0, 1, 2, 3) appear in the theory only through the variables ${\displaystyle g^{r0}}$, ${\displaystyle (-g^{00}{)}^{-1/2}}$ which occur as arbitrary coefficients in the equations of motion. There are four constraints or weak equations for each point of the surface ${\displaystyle x^0}$ = constant. Three of them ${\displaystyle H_r}$ form the four vector density in the surface. The fourth ${\displaystyle H_L}$ is a 3-dimensional scalar density in the surface H_L ≈ 0; H_r ≈ 0 (r = 1, 2, 3)

In the late 1950s, he applied the Hamiltonian methods he had developed to cast Einstein's general relativity in Hamiltonian form and to bring to a technical completion the quantization problem of gravitation and bring it also closer to the rest of physics according to Salam and DeWitt. In 1959 he also gave an invited talk on "Energy of the Gravitational Field" at the New York Meeting of the American Physical Society. In 1964 he published his Lectures on Quantum Mechanics (London: Academic) which deals with constrained dynamics of nonlinear dynamical systems including quantization of curved spacetime. He also published a paper entitled "Quantization of the Gravitational Field" in the 1967 ICTP/IAEA Trieste Symposium on Contemporary Physics.

From September 1970 to January 1971, Dirac was a visiting professor at Florida State University in Tallahassee. During that time he was offered a permanent position there, which he accepted, becoming a full professor in 1972. Contemporary accounts of his time there describe it as happy except that he apparently found the summer heat oppressive and liked to escape from it to Cambridge.

He would walk about a mile to work each day and was fond of swimming in one of the two nearby lakes (Silver Lake and Lost Lake), and was also more sociable than he had been at the University of Cambridge, where he mostly worked at home apart from giving classes and seminars. At Florida State, he would usually eat lunch with his colleagues before taking a nap.

Dirac published over 60 papers in those last twelve years of his life, including a short book on general relativity. His last paper (1984), entitled "The inadequacies of quantum field theory," contains his final judgment on quantum field theory: "These rules of renormalisation give surprisingly, excessively good agreement with experiments. Most physicists say that these working rules are, therefore, correct. I feel that is not an adequate reason. Just because the results happen to be in agreement with observation does not prove that one's theory is correct." The paper ends with the words: "I have spent many years searching for a Hamiltonian to bring into the theory and have not yet found it. I shall continue to work on it as long as I can and other people, I hope, will follow along such lines."

Students

Amongst his many students were Homi J. Bhabha, Fred Hoyle, John Polkinghorne and Freeman Dyson. Polkinghorne recalls that Dirac "was once asked what was his fundamental belief. He strode to a blackboard and wrote that the laws of nature should be expressed in beautiful equations."

Honours

Dirac shared the 1933 Nobel Prize for physics with Erwin Schrödinger "for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory". Dirac was also awarded the Royal Medal in 1939 and both the Copley Medal and the Max Planck Medal in 1952. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1930, a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1938, an Honorary Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1948, a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1949, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1950, and an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics, London in 1971. He received the inaugural J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize in 1969. Dirac became a member of the Order of Merit in 1973, having previously turned down a knighthood as he did not want to be addressed by his first name.^[50][102]

Death

The tombstone of Dirac and his wife in Roselawn Cemetery, Tallahassee, Florida. Their daughter Mary Elizabeth Dirac, who died 20 January 2007, is buried next to them.

The commemorative marker in Westminster Abbey.

Dirac (front row 3rd from left), next to Éamon de Valera (front row 4th from left), Erwin Schrödinger (front row 2nd from right) at Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in 1942.

The 1927 Solvay Conference in Brussels, a gathering of the world's top physicists. Dirac is in the center of the middle row, seated behind Albert Einstein.

In 1984, Dirac died in Tallahassee, Florida, and was buried at Tallahassee's Roselawn Cemetery. Dirac's childhood home in Bishopston, Bristol is commemorated with a blue plaque, and the nearby Dirac Road is named in recognition of his links with the city of Bristol. A commemorative stone was erected in a garden in Saint-Maurice, Switzerland, the town of origin of his father's family, on 1 August 1991. On 13 November 1995 a commemorative marker, made from Burlington green slate and inscribed with the Dirac equation, was unveiled in Westminster Abbey. The Dean of Westminster, Edward Carpenter, had initially refused permission for the memorial, thinking Dirac to be anti-Christian, but was eventually (over a five-year period) persuaded to relent.

Legacy

In 1975, Dirac gave a series of five lectures at the University of New South Wales which were subsequently published as a book, Directions in Physics (1978). He donated the royalties from this book to the university for the establishment of the Dirac Lecture Series. The Silver Dirac Medal for the Advancement of Theoretical Physics is awarded by the University of New South Wales to commemorate the lecture.

Immediately after his death, two organizations of professional physicists established annual awards in Dirac's memory. The Institute of Physics, the United Kingdom's professional body for physicists, awards the Paul Dirac Medal for "outstanding contributions to theoretical (including mathematical and computational) physics". The first three recipients were Stephen Hawking (1987), John Stewart Bell (1988), and Roger Penrose (1989). The International Centre for Theoretical Physics awards the Dirac Medal of the ICTP each year on Dirac's birthday (8 August).

The Dirac-Hellman Award at Florida State University was endowed by Bruce P. Hellman in 1997 to reward outstanding work in theoretical physics by FSU researchers. The Paul A.M. Dirac Science Library at Florida State University, which Manci opened in December 1989, is named in his honour, and his papers are held there. Outside is a statue of him by Gabriella Bollobás. The street on which the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Innovation Park of Tallahassee, Florida, is located is named Paul Dirac Drive. As well as in his hometown of Bristol, there is also a road named after him, Dirac Place, in Didcot, Oxfordshire.

The BBC named a video codec, Dirac, in his honour. An asteroid discovered in 1983 was named after Dirac. The Distributed Research utilising Advanced Computing (DiRAC) and Dirac software are named in his honour.

Publications

• The Principles of Quantum Mechanics (1930): This book summarises the ideas of quantum mechanics using the modern formalism that was largely developed by Dirac himself. Towards the end of the book, he also discusses the relativistic theory of the electron (the Dirac equation), which was also pioneered by him. This work does not refer to any other writings then available on quantum mechanics.
• Lectures on Quantum Mechanics (1966): Much of this book deals with quantum mechanics in curved space-time.
• Lectures on Quantum Field Theory (1966): This book lays down the foundations of quantum field theory using the Hamiltonian formalism.
• Spinors in Hilbert Space (1974): This book based on lectures given in 1969 at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, USA, deals with the basic aspects of spinors starting with a real Hilbert space formalism. Dirac concludes with the prophetic words "We have boson variables appearing automatically in a theory that starts with only fermion variables, provided the number of fermion variables is infinite. There must be such boson variables connected with electrons..."
• General Theory of Relativity (1975): This 69-page work summarises Einstein's general theory of relativity.