Observations about the Practice of Homeopathy Combined with Recent Laboratory-Based Research Results Provide Insights into the Fundamental Nature of Homeopathic Potencies

Whilst several physico-chemical projects across the world are engaged in research work to understand the fundamental nature of homeopathic potencies, there is often a lack of awareness amongst the scientific community regarding the practice of homeopathy. In particular, information from the manufacture, storage and administering of remedies is not generally integrated into research frameworks, leading to hypotheses about homeopathy that can be questioned or dismissed because they do not fit with known facts about homeopathic practice.Observations from the practice of homeopathy have been amalgamated here with results from various fundamental research studies, together with the writings of Samuel Hahnemann where these focus on the manufacture and administering of homeopathic medicines. By following this approach, it is shown that several restrictions are automatically placed on what hypotheses are possible regarding the physico-chemical nature of homeopathic potencies, while at the same time providing pointers as to what potencies might be.The above approach leads to several basic questions regarding the nature of homeopathic potencies. These questions include whether potencies are some form of exotic matter, whether they are gasiform in nature, whether they self-replicate, and whether they have some form of structure, in particular whether that structure might be fractal.Our approach allows for several possible explanations for the <i>modus operandi</i> of homeopathy to be dismissed, and in so doing narrows down what hypotheses can be put forward. Whilst it is still premature to offer testable hypotheses as to how homeopathy works, we are considerably closer to identifying the fundamental nature of homeopathic potencies than we were.