There seems to be a concerted effort among some in our profession to bring our chiropractic philosophy into line with the “new science,” holistic healing and quantum mechanics. In doing so, many are inadvertently or purposefully abandoning our metaphysical underpinnings.
Some of our problem begins with our post-Newtonian world view. Poor Isaac Newton gets blamed for the mechanistic viewpoint that has been embraced by much of science and all of therapeutic medicine. Only recently have forward thinking scientists rejected this mechanistic model, or have they? In Newton’s defense, he was not a mechanist. In fact, he came from a strong Christian faith. His belief was that while God was manifested through the physical matter of the universe, He transcended that matter. It was His creation and He was apart from it. Newton’s desire was to look at the creation in order to see the Creator, not just to look at the creation and no further. This view is consistent with historical chiropractic philosophy despite the fact that some modern chiropractic philosophers would rather it be otherwise. We look at the matter and see the principle of organization. We are not a corpse, we are the expression of intelligence through matter. Our model of the Triune of Life (Principle No. 4) delineates the intelligence, the force and the matter. They are separate but united. They are distinct entities, not interchangeable. Quantum Physics may demonstrate that matter can become energy but it can never become force, nor can it become intelligence or replace intelligence. There is still the metaphysical beyond Einstein’s model.
From the personal/transcendent God of Newton, there developed the idea of a God who was not involved in His creation. He wound the watch and left it to run itself. Some of our nation’s founding fathers accepted this idea called deism. From there, the Darwin idea developed that God does not even exist and that natural laws, which developed over time and by chance, are what runs the universe. That is the mechanistic viewpoint, what is commonly called scientific naturalism. However, the idea that the complexities of the universe and the human body developed by chance is harder to believe than the idea of intelligent design and an intelligent Designer. As a result, the pendulum is beginning to move back again. We in chiropractic are part of the vanguard in that movement, but we need to make sure we are truly going in the right direction. We need to make sure that we are not substituting mechanistic terms like “energy” for “force.” Force, as we understand it in chiropractic, has a metaphysical component to it. Energy is purely physical. “Mind” is a chiropractic term to describe the activity of the innate intelligence. It is not the innate intelligence or the innate brain. It is great to see science coming in our direction but realize that they are never going to be where we are unless and until they totally revolutionize their thinking to include metaphysical concepts. Frankly, that is a leap that I do not believe that science can make. It necessitates an attitude of humility, which is not prevalent among a group, that on the whole, wants to play God. We must be careful that those who are embracing pseudo-metaphysics, emphasizing terms that we like, do not envelope us with their ideas which are really only mechanism with a thin veneer of vitalistic ideas covering it. V18n4